Armen Ohanian
Encyclopedia
Armen Ohanian born Sophia Pirboudaghian (1887 – 1976) was an Armenia
n dancer, actress, writer, and translator.
(now in Azerbaijan
) to an upper-class Armenian
family. A devastating earthquake caused her family to move to Baku
, where she attended a Russian
school. She graduated in 1905, the same year the anti-Armenian pogroms, which she witnessed, caused the death of her father, Emanuel. She was hurriedly married to an Armenian Iranian doctor, Haik Ohanian, but the marriage did not go well and ended within a year. She kept her married name but changed her first name to Armenuhi (later Armen) when she began her acting career at the Armenian Dramatic Theatre of Baku in 1907. She later moved to Moscow
and studied plastic arts at the Nelidova School, while performing her first dances at the Maly Theatre.
After a short stint at the Tbilisi Opera in 1909, Ohanian returned to Iran
, where she appeared on stage as a dancer and actress during the last period of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution
. She founded the Union of Iranian Theater-Lovers in Tehran
. In April 1910 she organized a musical and literary gala in cooperation with the Iranian Women Benevolent Association. For the first time, Iranian women were able to play on the stage and watch a film. In May 1910 she produced and directed Nikolai Gogol
’s The Revisor in Persian
, playing the role of Maria Antonovna.
While in Iran, she perfected her skills in Oriental dances. After leaving the country and touring Egypt
and the Ottoman Empire
, she was hired to perform in London
. From then to the early 1930s she would become quite a sought-after name, as part of the craze for exotic dances that swept the Western cultural scene at the time. By using the methods of “free dance” developed by the famous American
dancer Isadora Duncan
, she created her own choreographies based on Armenian
and Iranian music
. Many of her dances, such as “Salome,” “At the Temple of Anahit,” “Treason,” “The Matchmaker,” “Haschich,” “The Great Khan of Shamakha,” and others, fascinated the Europe
an public. She performed extensively in London, Paris
, Brussels
, Milan
, Sofia
, Madrid
, and other European cities, as well as in the United States
and Mexico
. Her performances were widely covered in the press and met the approval of writers such as Maurice Maeterlinck
, Rene Ghil, Claude Anet, and others.
After settling in Paris
in 1912, Ohanian made her first forays into literature, her poems and autobiographical sketches eventually found their way in the press. Her first book, The Dancer of Shamakha, was published in 1918 in in French
, and prefaced by Anatole France
. The book was translated into English
, Spanish
, German
, Swedish
, and Finnish
. She later published other memoirs, such as In the Paws of Civilization in 1921, The Laughs of A Snake Enchanter, an account of her 1926-1927 sojourn in the Soviet Union
, in 1931, In the Sixth Part of the World (Journey into Russia) in 1928; and a novel, The Soloist of His Majesty in 1929.
Her love life in the twilight of the Belle Epoque
was no less eventful than her artistic career. A bisexual, she had relationships with various people such as painter Emile Bernard
, writer and politician Maurice Barres
, writer Andre Germain, and a short-lived affair with famous American writer Nathalie Barney. She finally married the Mexican
economist and diplomat Makedonio Garza in 1921, and after living in Paris, Moscow, and Madrid
, the couple settled in Mexico in 1934.
The decline of her dance career did not deter Ohanian from pursuing cultural and political interests. Having become interested in the native dances of Mexico during a brief trip in the 1920s, she founded a school of dance in Mexico City
in 1936. Committed to communism
since the mid-1920s, Ohanian was an active member of the Mexican Communist Party
. In collaboration with her husband, Ohanian translated many books from Russian into Spanish, but also became a prolific author in her own right with books on Russian/Soviet and Mexican literature. In 1946 she published Happy Armenia, a book on Soviet Armenia in Spanish, which marked a renewal of interest in her Armenian ancestry. Among her literary output, however, her work of choice was a poem, “My Dream as an Exile,” written in Armenian and published in 1953 in Paris.
Ohanian made a comeback in the Mexican dance scene in 1948 and appeared on the stage in Paris in 1949 and 1953, when she was well into her sixties. During a second visit to the Soviet Union in 1958 with her husband, they traveled briefly to Yerevan
, Armenia, where she offered part of her private files to the Museum of Literature and Arts. After returning to Mexico, she continued to write, translate, and publish until 1969, when she came out with a first volume of memoirs in Spanish.
Armenia
Armenia , officially the Republic of Armenia , is a landlocked mountainous country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia...
n dancer, actress, writer, and translator.
Biography
Armen Ohanian was born in Shamakha, then part of the Russian EmpireRussian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
(now in Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan , officially the Republic of Azerbaijan is the largest country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia to the north, Georgia to the northwest, Armenia to the west, and Iran to...
) to an upper-class Armenian
Armenians
Armenian people or Armenians are a nation and ethnic group native to the Armenian Highland.The largest concentration is in Armenia having a nearly-homogeneous population with 97.9% or 3,145,354 being ethnic Armenian....
family. A devastating earthquake caused her family to move to Baku
Baku
Baku , sometimes spelled as Baki or Bakou, is the capital and largest city of Azerbaijan, as well as the largest city on the Caspian Sea and of the Caucasus region. It is located on the southern shore of the Absheron Peninsula, which projects into the Caspian Sea. The city consists of two principal...
, where she attended a Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
school. She graduated in 1905, the same year the anti-Armenian pogroms, which she witnessed, caused the death of her father, Emanuel. She was hurriedly married to an Armenian Iranian doctor, Haik Ohanian, but the marriage did not go well and ended within a year. She kept her married name but changed her first name to Armenuhi (later Armen) when she began her acting career at the Armenian Dramatic Theatre of Baku in 1907. She later moved to Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
and studied plastic arts at the Nelidova School, while performing her first dances at the Maly Theatre.
After a short stint at the Tbilisi Opera in 1909, Ohanian returned to Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
, where she appeared on stage as a dancer and actress during the last period of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution
Iranian Constitutional Revolution
The Persian Constitutional Revolution or Iranian Constitutional Revolution took place between 1905 and 1907...
. She founded the Union of Iranian Theater-Lovers in Tehran
Tehran
Tehran , sometimes spelled Teheran, is the capital of Iran and Tehran Province. With an estimated population of 8,429,807; it is also Iran's largest urban area and city, one of the largest cities in Western Asia, and is the world's 19th largest city.In the 20th century, Tehran was subject to...
. In April 1910 she organized a musical and literary gala in cooperation with the Iranian Women Benevolent Association. For the first time, Iranian women were able to play on the stage and watch a film. In May 1910 she produced and directed Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a Ukrainian-born Russian dramatist and novelist.Considered by his contemporaries one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism, later critics have found in Gogol's work a fundamentally romantic sensibility, with strains of Surrealism...
’s The Revisor in Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
, playing the role of Maria Antonovna.
While in Iran, she perfected her skills in Oriental dances. After leaving the country and touring Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
and the Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
, she was hired to perform in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. From then to the early 1930s she would become quite a sought-after name, as part of the craze for exotic dances that swept the Western cultural scene at the time. By using the methods of “free dance” developed by the famous American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
dancer Isadora Duncan
Isadora Duncan
Isadora Duncan was a dancer, considered by many to be the creator of modern dance. Born in the United States, she lived in Western Europe and the Soviet Union from the age of 22 until her death at age 50. In the United States she was popular only in New York, and only later in her life...
, she created her own choreographies based on Armenian
Music of Armenia
Armenia is situated close to the Caucasus Mountains, and its music is a mix of indigenous folk music, perhaps best-represented by Djivan Gasparyan's well-known duduk music, as well as light pop, and extensive Christian music, due to Armenia's status as the oldest Christian nation in the...
and Iranian music
Music of Iran
The music of Iran has thousands of years of history, as seen in the archeological documents of Elam, one of the earliest world cultures,which was located in southwestern Iran...
. Many of her dances, such as “Salome,” “At the Temple of Anahit,” “Treason,” “The Matchmaker,” “Haschich,” “The Great Khan of Shamakha,” and others, fascinated the Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
an public. She performed extensively in London, Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
, Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
, Sofia
Sofia
Sofia is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria and the 12th largest city in the European Union with a population of 1.27 million people. It is located in western Bulgaria, at the foot of Mount Vitosha and approximately at the centre of the Balkan Peninsula.Prehistoric settlements were excavated...
, Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
, and other European cities, as well as in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
. Her performances were widely covered in the press and met the approval of writers such as Maurice Maeterlinck
Maurice Maeterlinck
Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck, also called Comte Maeterlinck from 1932, was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who wrote in French. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911. The main themes in his work are death and the meaning of life...
, Rene Ghil, Claude Anet, and others.
After settling in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
in 1912, Ohanian made her first forays into literature, her poems and autobiographical sketches eventually found their way in the press. Her first book, The Dancer of Shamakha, was published in 1918 in in French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, and prefaced by Anatole France
Anatole France
Anatole France , born François-Anatole Thibault, , was a French poet, journalist, and novelist. He was born in Paris, and died in Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire. He was a successful novelist, with several best-sellers. Ironic and skeptical, he was considered in his day the ideal French man of letters...
. The book was translated into English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, Swedish
Swedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
, and Finnish
Finnish language
Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
. She later published other memoirs, such as In the Paws of Civilization in 1921, The Laughs of A Snake Enchanter, an account of her 1926-1927 sojourn in the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, in 1931, In the Sixth Part of the World (Journey into Russia) in 1928; and a novel, The Soloist of His Majesty in 1929.
Her love life in the twilight of the Belle Epoque
Belle Époque
The Belle Époque or La Belle Époque was a period in European social history that began during the late 19th century and lasted until World War I. Occurring during the era of the French Third Republic and the German Empire, it was a period characterised by optimism and new technological and medical...
was no less eventful than her artistic career. A bisexual, she had relationships with various people such as painter Emile Bernard
Émile Bernard
Émile Henri Bernard is known as a Post-Impressionist painter who had artistic friendships with Van Gogh, Gauguin and Eugene Boch, and at a later time, Cézanne. Most of his notable work was accomplished at a young age, in the years 1886 through 1897. He is also associated with Cloisonnism and...
, writer and politician Maurice Barres
Maurice Barrès
Maurice Barrès was a French novelist, journalist, and socialist politician and agitator known for his nationalist and antisemitic views....
, writer Andre Germain, and a short-lived affair with famous American writer Nathalie Barney. She finally married the Mexican
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
economist and diplomat Makedonio Garza in 1921, and after living in Paris, Moscow, and Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
, the couple settled in Mexico in 1934.
The decline of her dance career did not deter Ohanian from pursuing cultural and political interests. Having become interested in the native dances of Mexico during a brief trip in the 1920s, she founded a school of dance in Mexico City
Mexico City
Mexico City is the Federal District , capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole...
in 1936. Committed to communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
since the mid-1920s, Ohanian was an active member of the Mexican Communist Party
Mexican Communist Party
The Mexican Communist Party was a communist party in Mexico. It was founded in 1911 as the Socialist Workers' Party by Manabendra Nath Roy, a left-wing Indian intellectual. The PSO changed its name to the Mexican Communist Party in November 1919 following the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia...
. In collaboration with her husband, Ohanian translated many books from Russian into Spanish, but also became a prolific author in her own right with books on Russian/Soviet and Mexican literature. In 1946 she published Happy Armenia, a book on Soviet Armenia in Spanish, which marked a renewal of interest in her Armenian ancestry. Among her literary output, however, her work of choice was a poem, “My Dream as an Exile,” written in Armenian and published in 1953 in Paris.
Ohanian made a comeback in the Mexican dance scene in 1948 and appeared on the stage in Paris in 1949 and 1953, when she was well into her sixties. During a second visit to the Soviet Union in 1958 with her husband, they traveled briefly to Yerevan
Yerevan
Yerevan is the capital and largest city of Armenia and one of the world's oldest continuously-inhabited cities. Situated along the Hrazdan River, Yerevan is the administrative, cultural, and industrial center of the country...
, Armenia, where she offered part of her private files to the Museum of Literature and Arts. After returning to Mexico, she continued to write, translate, and publish until 1969, when she came out with a first volume of memoirs in Spanish.