Thanks to Christina Galstian, a dancer and choreographer hailing from Soviet Armenia, the company Yeraz (“dream”) was founded in the region of Paris. This company is a magnet for young people who all hold in their hearts something of the lost Armenia of their great grand-parents: cuisine and music, but also grief and anger. Through dance, a powerful exorcism, the company perpetuates an age-old tradition at the same time as it re-invents it. 

Between 2007 and 2015, the filmmaker Jacques Kébadian filmed these dozens of young people, girls and boys, hailing, as he does, from the Armenian diaspora. A few interviews were added to the many rehearsal and performance scenes (including a success at Olympia). Christina Galstian, whose exacting standards, inventiveness and sensitivity we measure, is the soul behind this artistic adventure. Through her work and enthusiasm, she has managed to draw out the best in each person and to ensure a formulation by dance of the surplus energy and emotion that these young people sometimes have problems expressing. From the collective trauma, shows are born that extol both the lost country and the dreams of today’s youth. In Beirut, the touring troupe walks the streets of the Armenian district to cheering crowds. After a new stage triumph, the dream ends (temporarily) with a wedding, no less choreographic, at the Armenian cathedral in Paris.

Source : Eva Ségal