Banafsheh Amiri

Biography: 

Banafsheh Amiri is an Iranian dancer, choreographer and instructor with her unique signature style of Persian dance. Her choreography is a creative mixture of classical, folkloric, sacred rituals and contemporary dances of Persia.
She is a BA graduate in Fine Art (Alzahra University of Tehran, Iran-2006), and a MA graduate in Interior Design (university of Brighton, UK-2009).

Banafsheh has started dancing classical Iranian from an early age in Iran (in 1992) and has spent more than 18 years of training in various styles of dances from all over the world both in Iran and Europe; Including Iranian classical & Folkloric Dances, Flamenco, Latin-Salsa Cubana, Contemporary Dance and basic Ballet. She has also been trained in the field of traditional Iranian vocals (Persian Radif_Avazi) since 2013.

Since 2006, she has devoted herself to innovate Iranian choreography and created her own style to expand the vocabulary of her homeland dances. Banafsheh’s dance style contains detailed and delicate movements to express the emotions, elegance, femininity and natural elements of Persian ladies. Due to the mentioned factors, she named  her individual dance style and her dance group Miniature .

Banafsheh has over 14 years of experience as a solo dancer, choreographer, and instructor. She is also the founder of Miniature Dance Academy (for ladies only) and the artistic director of Miniature Dance Group since 2012, which has performed in several Performances for women in Tehran-Iran.

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Style

Banafsheh’s extensive training in world dance styles, over 20 years of practicing Iranian traditional and folkloric dance, along with deep understanding of Iranian art, culture and music, allows her to develop a new method of presenting and instructing Iranian dance, also known as Banafsheh – Miniature Dance Style.

Her Innovative dance methodology allows Banafsheh to retain all that she feels necessary from Iranian regional culture and folk dances, blends them with the classical or modern techniques, flavours them with Persian feelings and re-invent them in a traditional or contemporary theme to portray her vision of Iranian dance.

As a choreographer she utilised a wide variety of movement styles, not only from Iranian and worldwide dances, but also some which she describes as a habitual Iranian behaviours and their impulsive gestures. All the movements are flourished by delicacy and grace of Persian ladies and artistically flavoured by natural Persian feelings.

She is also a story teller, using her dance as a free-style tool to share not only her deepest concerns about her homeland art and culture heritage, but also reveals stories of the daily life in contemporary Iran.

Banafsheh continues to find her inspiration both in Iranian artistic heritage and in everyday story of Iran’s today.

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Statement

My intension is to bring ‘the joy’ of being a Persian lady back to the modern ladies of Iran.  It seems that we, ”modern Iranian ladies”, are simply forgetting about the graceful and femininity we have in our natural unconscious behaviours. It’s time to flash back and mapping who we really are? To sense our cultural feeling and emotions, through our long-lost memories.  The sensory experiences that build attachments to our roots. We need to re- build connections to our natural and historic experiences by digging into our past, vintage family photos and old stories. I use dance, as a sensory technique, for mapping the story of Iranian ladies. I believe that we need to recall the ways to convey our deepest message through our inherited female strength, prominent body languages، facial expressions, delicate head gestures, purposeful smiles and sophisticated eye expressions. Clearly, there are still a lot to be said.

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