A Mystical Journey Through The Silk Road

A Mystical Journey Through the Silk Road

Music, dance, and poetry of the Silk Road with Farima Berenji, Latif Bolat, Sadegh Azmand, Rashid Shadat, and the Simorgh Dance Collective of Turkey.

Farima Berenji

Farima Berenji is an Iranian-born scholar and an award winning, internationally acclaimed performing artist, choreographer, instructor, lecturer, dance ethnologist, and archaeologist specializing in classical, folkloric, and sacred dances of Persia and the Silk Road. Her training spans a lifetime of intensive collaboration and research with master artists, scholars, and spiritual teachers worldwide. She is the founder and artistic director of the Simorgh Dance Collective, a worldwide collaborative devoted to teach dance technique, interpret, illustrate, present, and perform dances of the Silk Road. Farima performs, offers workshops, and lectures worldwide upon request and has appeared in the US, UK, Austria, Czech Republic, Turkey, Mauritius, and Iran. Read more..

Latif Bolat

Latif Bolat, one of the most renowned Turkish musicians now living in North America, is a Turkish musician, vocalist, composer, and scholar of Turkish music and folklore. He has presented concerts and lectures at colleges, universities, performing arts institutions and festivals across the US, Canada, England, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Bulgaria, Philippines, Scotland, Singapore, Indonesia and Turkey. With a vast repertory that includes songs in classical, folk and Sufi mystic music styles, he accompanies his singing on the baglama (long-necked lute), and various other traditional instruments from the Turkish folk music tradition. Read more..

Rashid Shadat

Rashid Shadat is a well-known performer, originally from Tashkent, Uzbekistan. His work in Central Asia included lead roles in popular films during early 2000’s, plus regular TV appearances and as a daily radio host on Auto Radio Hamroh FM102. Now living in London, Rashid has expanded his portfolio to include work as an extra in big budget films. In 2015 alone he worked on Spectre (James Bond), Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation and the new Bourne Identity film being released in 2016. Currently he is working as an extra on the remake of the classic superhero film, Wonder Woman. In addition to film, Rashid is also well known in London as a host for cultural and arts events, and starred in his own one-man show, Dervish, at the Lion and Unicorn Theatre in 2012. With 10 years of theatre experience including acting and directing, Rashid is also a well known folk dancer, having performed at dance and music festivals in London, Sweden, Greece and Germany over the last five years.

Sadegh Azmand

Sadegh Azmand is an internationally acclaimed Sufi musician and singer from Iran. Since the age of 6, Sadegh has been studying Sufi Music and Tanboor with world Sufi Music Masters. At the age of 17, Sadegh he started his vocal training in Iranian Sufi Music.