Haygagan Bar: Embodying the Homeland through Armenian Dance

In this paper, I investigate how diasporan Armenians in the United States experience an embodied, affective connection to Armenia and Armenians through dance based on interviews and ethnographic data. I start with a general discussion of what homeland means for Armenians and situate dance within these understandings. Then, focusing on the desire for cultural preservation, I examine how Armenians use dance to present particular narratives, sometimes stemming from romantic nationalism. This romanticized presentation can alienate those who do not fit within a narrow version of Armenianness, and I further explore how many Armenians shift away from this fixity by making dance more relevant to their own contexts. I show how these Armenians create community while incorporating dance into their everyday lives. Moreover, dance evokes strong emotions that reinforce these social connections and elicit embodied feelings of homeland. In this way, Armenians dance to establish community and experience a sense of homeland through feeling and being with other Armenian people.