Exploring empathy through movement and story-telling

Jingle Laura María Calderón Cuevas
Interviewer Véronique Lerch
Editing Brua | bruapodcasts.com

Transcipt

Kosta Karakashyan 00:02

Two roads diverged in a wood and I, I took the one less traveled by and that has made all the  difference.

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Veronique Lerch 00:18

Welcome to a new episode of our podcast The Road Less travel. This is a project of the Center of  human rights from the University of Padova and Global Campus of human rights. With this project on  this podcast, we aim at exploring the less usual careers and career paths after a degree in human  rights. We started it because we strongly believe it is not just a field for lawyers, and we need people  from all walks of life to work with human rights, I guess today illustrates perfectly or you can combine  art and activism or you can integrate human rights in an artistic career and what the human rights  movement can learn from dance. Kosta is a Bulgarian Armenian director, choreographer, producer and  writer, exploring empathy through movement and storytelling. Welcome Kosta!

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Kosta Karakashyan 01:09

Hi, it is a real pleasure to be here.

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Veronique Lerch 01:11

A very warm welcome to you. We are very excited for this conversation. I think your curriculum vitae is  a bit too long to read on this podcast. I don't know you managed to pack so much in so little time. But  maybe to kick off this interview, I think it would be great if you could tell us a little bit about your first  step as a dancer. I gathered from other interviews. You already have around 20 years of dancing  because you started as a child. And you started with ballroom dancing. So maybe you can tell us a little  bit about this. And when you knew that it was going to be you know, professional, you would be a  professional dancer.

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Kosta Karakashyan 01:50

I started dancing when I was just five years old, I was in kindergarten still was not even in first grade.  And I loved telling the story. It was a happy accident that led me to dance. In kindergarten, I had my  first girlfriend in quotation marks Mila, and we're still very close friends to this day. But her parents  wanted to take her to a dance class. And because we were spending all our time together in  kindergarten, my parents decided to also take me to the same class. And they figured out the time, but  when I got their Mila's parents didn't take her that day, so it was just me and the other young kids and I  stayed for the lesson. And I really loved it. And I've been dancing ever since basically. started, as you  said with ballroom, which is there's two styles Latin and standard. Latin is the Cha Cha, Samba and  standard ballroom is the waltz, the tango and so on. And it was a childhood full of a lot of dance competitions every single weekend in a different city around the country. And the first professional  steps were kind of growing up, we already would have a few performances here and there, we would  do dance shows for, you know, certain special dates or holidays, or just all types of interesting events.  And then when I was 18, I was still in high school and I received an invitation to join Dancing with the  Stars in Vietnam as a professional dancer. It was a really surprising invitation from a Bulgarian dancer  that I had known and the show in Vietnam, is really passionate about bringing dancers from Bulgaria  because they really like the quality and work ethic of the Bulgarian ballroom dancers for some reason.  And yes, I was very hesitant, because I was still in high school and I wasn't sure how, you know,  logistically to make it happen. But my dad told me, you know, you should just say yes, and we'll figure  out school. If we have to, we'll take you out of high school for a year and then figure it out. So he was  really instrumental in getting me to the show. And being on the show, you know, suddenly, you have a  TV show where millions of people watch it every week, you get to wear these amazing costumes, to  work on a really big platform with a really nice team. So that was the moment when I decided that I  could do this professionally. Before that I was planning to study pre-med in college.

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Veronique Lerch 04:43

I had it's quite quite a different carrier plan. So yeah, basically a very interesting, unexpected  connection between Bulgaria and Vietnam and the support of your parents actually led you to take this  first step into your professional career. And then you decided to study Dance. You went to New York if  if I remember well.

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Kosta Karakashyan 05:04

Yes, New York was the next logical step, which then surprisingly, also led to human rights.

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Veronique Lerch 05:14

I like the fact that you say it's logical. I think it's what is interesting about nonlinear career paths is I think  we decide what is logical or not. And we make sense of what happens to us. And, and I think this is  what you're doing. And I think that's why it's so fantastic. So yeah, can you tell us a little bit more than  we this human rights interest started while you were studying dance? And I don't know if there was any  human rights interest before that. But I know the way it started in your bachelor, and it's a very  interesting story. So if you could tell us about that?

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Kosta Karakashyan 05:46

Yes, absolutely. When I was doing the dance program at Columbia University in New York, I another  thing that from Vietnam, I brought with myself to New York was, you know, the freedom for me also as  a queer person to be out and to be really comfortable with myself, because in Bulgaria, it still is quite  hard for queer people. So first, being in Vietnam gave me the separation from my life, to be able to ask  myself who I am and who I want to be. And then New York, you know, is such a free and amazing  space for queer people, because of all its history, and how instrumental it was to the movement for  queer rights. And then, while I was in New York, I remember reading about the situation in Chechnya about the systematic persecution of queer people in Chechnya by the government. And it was a really  difficult thing to read about how people like me were tortured, kidnapped, and it was a really horrifying  story. But reading about it, I felt like I needed to do something as an artist and as a fellow queer person  to somehow shed more light on it. And I remember reading a few pieces in the news and thinking that because there's so much going on, people will very quickly forget about the situation. So I asked myself, you know, how can I, as an artist, as a dancer, be part of this conversation in a way that  amplifies the actual stories there. So as luck would have it, I had a class in Barnard College, that was  called screen dance, it was a class specifically for directing and choreographing dance for the camera.  And it was around the end of the semester, when I realized I could make a dance film about the  situation in Chechnya. And it was a six-minute dance shorts that we filmed with zero budget with some  friends who were really passionate about how passionate I was about the topic. So we had a  cinematographer, a composer and two voice actors who dubbed stories we use both in English and in  Russian, we took 37 anonymous stories from the Russian LGBT network. And they recorded these  stories both in a female and a male voice because we wanted to capture as much of the experience as  we can. And then I choreographed the solo performance using the language of contemporary dance  kind of trying to physicalize how it was three emotional states feel we focused on the paranoia of  surveillance on the actual brutal physical torture, and then on the more abstract uncertainty of what will  happen with queer people in Chechnya, and where can we go and what are the steps? So the film, as I  said, it was really a very personal work. I think every artist is lucky if they have two or three of these in  their life when you feel so moved to create something that it doesn't matter if it's with a budget or  without, but you feel like you're really drawing the inspiration out of thin air and you feel so sure that this  is the project that you were made to create. And this is your energy and sparks other people to also join  in your project. And it was really felt the film did really well both with festivals and people from  Chechnya got to see it. And it led also to be asked to be part of another film about Chechnya. It's called  "Welcome to Chechnya" it is a feature documentary by David France. In that film, David and his team  went undercover to Russia to film the stories of of queer Chechnyan people trying to flee the country.  And all of the real subjects of the film agreed to do it only if they could guarantee full anonymity. So,  David and the team for the first time in history of documentary film, they use deep fakes. And they  asked me and other activists to volunteer our faces to be part of this project. So one of the faces in the  film is mine. And then the film went on to I think it was distributed by HBO, it was shortlisted for an  Oscar, it won one BAFTA Award. And it was really amazing the reach that their project had; and people  in Russia, were also able to watch it. And for me, this whole experience was really surprising how from  something that moved me in the news, I was able to be part of both of these projects. And through long  story short, through making the film I also met some activists, like Remy Bonny, who is also alumni of  the EMA program. And he told me about the master's program actually at the Global Campus. And he  told me, if you're really passionate, why don't you apply for this program? And that's what I did.

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Veronique Lerch 11:21

Well, it is quite a fascinating story. And I think it shows you know, the way when you're really  passionate about an issue, you can really do a lot with not a lot of means. And it leads you further as it  did for you, it makes you meet the right people for your, you know, for your path. So yeah, it's  interesting that you then decided to do a master's in human rights, which is quite a commitment for an  artist to then engage in mastering human rights. And I was wondering, I mean, whether you felt  sometimes a little bit alone in the Master, you know, coming with an artistic background and being  surrounded by they were not only lawyers, but there's a lot of people with legal backgrounds. So I'm  wondering, you know, how you felt about that?

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Kosta Karakashyan 12:02

Yeah, it was something that I felt a bit apprehensive also, before coming to the Masters even, you  know, during applying and being accepted. And then finally, making the commitment. All of these  moments, I was saying to myself, Wow, am I really, however, I fit into this group of people. But I think  dance has given me some type of courage because when you're on stage, or you are competing, you  have to show your strong side, you can stand out by doing the same thing that everyone else is doing.  So I said to myself, you know, maybe it will be a good thing. And it will show a different perspective,  being in a room full of people with the law or international relations background to have this unique  look, I think, and that was the case. But you know, the master only showed me that it's not enough for  just lawyers, or just artists to be part of goals and issues that we're dealing with. But it's really a team  effort. And I felt that also studying for the exams, you know, we would get together and the people who  had the law background would help the rest of us with some of the trickier things I would help some of  the other students with expressing themselves through writing, maybe in a more fun or more creative  way. And it was really a team effort. Now, looking back, it was really intense year in the Masters and  being together was the thing that made it fun and actually helped us get through it.

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Veronique Lerch 13:56

Actually, I mean, watching one of your video where you talk about the movement in a dance, and I think  he was one of ballroom dance, I think it was maybe samba, I think you were talking about it and saying,  you know, it starts with the groove, and then the invitation. And then you move on to like the risk step  where you evaluate the risk, I think for me, and then like, the whole thing sounds so much, you know,  that something you could actually use in terms of having a dialogue with others. And you know, there's  so much in terms of listening skills that we can learn from dance, for people working in the human rights  movement. And what I love about the way you talk about it is at the end, you say, and then we become  fabulous. That's the last stage of that dance. And it says, if we go further together, you know, then we  would have gone alone. And I think it's what you saying about what you did in the master. So you  actually went on the dance with the people from the master. And you went further?

Kosta Karakashyan 14:51

Yes, yeah, absolutely. It's very much about together growing beyond the limits and it's quite an abstract  thing, of course to say, but it's something that in dance you feel very strongly physically, because  having a dance partner, you know, you can certainly move in unexpected direction or lean out further in  space than you can if you're not holding on to someone. So it's this constant feeling that's very alive  between you. It's not just one or the other, like any relationship, it's moving together all the time. So I  think this is something that I did feel we could be doing more in the field of human rights, because  there's so many structures and routines and the proper ways to go about it. And sometimes you need  to find that flexibility and freedom to feel like we are moving forward otherwise, can become very rigid.

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Veronique Lerch 15:56

Yeah, absolutely. And I think then this gives us this opportunity and, and also to connect with emotions.  And we know that we need to connect with emotion in order to connect with our emotions, and connect  with the emotions of others if we want to move forward. So I wonder, you know, do you see any way we  

could integrate more dance in human rights education? In human rights advocacy? Your dance film,  waiting for color did remind me of, there was a piece from William Forsythe. You know, do you know  that that piece from it did a piece on called 'human writes' from writing and he did it in in Geneva with legal scholar, Kendall, Thomas. And it was about dancing the Human Rights Convention, if I remember,  well, the Human Rights declaration. Yeah, I wonder we can use more this, you know, in I mean, you're  more dance in human rights education?

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Kosta Karakashyan 16:56

Yeah, I think there is a lot of different avenues. Because there's something about art, in general, when  it's done in a truthful way, is very arresting, it just makes you stop in your tracks and watch and take it  in, when an artist is really committed to their mission, whatever the medium is, and this is something  that as practitioners in the field of human rights are also so personally invested, you know, it's not a  career that we go into, in a very, like, relaxed way, it's a career that moves us and pulls us towards it,  when we feel there's some wrong in the world that we want to make, right. And with dance, the  direction that I'm exploring now is using immersive performance. So it's a form of live theater or dance,  we do a combination of theater and dance in our performances where the audience is really submerged  into a very tangible, physical situation. So we've done a few performances. One of them isn't directly  related to human rights in the traditional sense, but more about, you know, the ethics of the workplace.  It's a piece called kitchen, and it takes place in a culinary academy. So it's a piece where the audience,  in the beginning sits down, as in a traditional restaurant, but then they're invited to get up from the table  and go behind to see what actually happens in the kitchen. And it's a story that we developed together  with my boyfriend who is a pastry chef and has seen a lot of the real physical and mental things that go  on in the kitchen. So you know, we tackle like the relationship with abusive boss in the workplace.

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Veronique Lerch 18:59

definitely work human rights related. I mean, in terms of right to mental health and workers rights.

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Kosta Karakashyan 19:07

Exactly. There is a lot of talk about the mental health of the people in the kitchen, and we show this  through a few direct situations. And then at the end, the audience, sees the team and the kitchen, kind  of come together to resolve these things. And then at the end, they get to eat a real dessert. So it's, it's  an interesting piece. And then the other one that we created last year, in co-production with Goethe  Institut, it was in partnership with Greenpeace and Gabrovo Biennial of Humor and Satire, they, it's this  biennial specifically was on the topic of climate change through humor and satire, and they invited  artists and activists to come together and come up with concepts and together with the Greenpeace,  we decided to raise awareness about one of their initiatives by making immersive show at the regional  landfill for non-hazardous waste in Gabrovo. And this was an amazing experience, because we got to  transform the landfill went to dystopian future where there is no more clean air, no more clean water,  and the audience is really facing this reality in an unexpected way they can touch it, they can smell it,  they are really engulfed in this environment, we have a group of dancers that represent all of us who  don't have the means to resist all of the ecological crisis coming as a result of the climate crisis. So they  were very these very scary dancers that were really close to the audience, we also had our antagonist  where a group called the corporation who wants to induct the audience, and to show them that, you  know, if they're sneaky, they can save a little bit of resources just for this inner circle. And then we also  had a group called the resistance who kind of exemplify the activists and the whistleblowers. So the  audience could make a choice if they will go with the resistance or stay with the corporation. And it was  asking the audience within the safe space to make a moral choice within this hour. And then at the end, when they leave the show. We also ask them, which side are you on after you saw it? Do you want to  make a change? And then we point them to the initiatives that Greenpeace are doing. So that is really  fun to create.

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Veronique Lerch 21:48

Yeah, it sounds fun, but fantastic. Like both are very scary at the same time. So yeah, that sounds that  sounds absolutely fantastic. A good illustration of the way we can use dance for human rights and  social justice. And I'm wondering, like with this type of pieces, you know, dance pieces? And do you  experience any pushback, maybe from the dance word, saying, you know, this is too engaged, or this is  too much? You know, where is the artistic aspect and you're too much about human rights and those  issues. And so because sometimes I hear this, you know, that people say, Oh, it's just an engaged  piece of work. And then the artistic aspect has been neglected to an end the other way around. I mean,  do you feel like sometimes the human rights people working fully for NGOs, the UN are not taking  artists seriously? I mean, do you feel any pushback on both sides?

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Kosta Karakashyan 22:37

It's a tricky balance, I think in my work specifically with, because the answers are so abstract in nature,  in its by design, it's difficult to make, oh, not impossible, but it's harder to make a dance piece that feels  just political without content. But I think with maybe theatre or music, or literature, you can fall into that  trap more easily if you're really passionate about the topic, but dance already forces you to it's like  making a translation into another language, right. And dance is a different language. So it's already  changing. I think with dance, what I've seen, a critique that I have for other artists often is that their  heart is in the right place. But the work that they're showing doesn't feel like it's the right vehicle for the  topic that they're creating. Because sometimes you will see that the work is very clearly socially  engaged, you'll see that it was, maybe it did have a good partner advisor, which is something that we  always do we every step of the process, we have advisors that we check in with to see if you know  we're on the right path artistically and communications wise, specifically. But sometimes it feels like the  work we're seeing if we hadn't read what it's meant to stand for them, the work wouldn't communicate  this. So it's very difficult. I admire every artist that creates this type of work, but I know how hard it is to  stay on the topic and do it in a respectful way to do it in an engaging way. And then to do it in a creative  way. That's so much pressure.  

Veronique Lerch 24:36

I think you're trying to achieve a lot with one piece, you know, I think it's much more difficult than just  doing it then.  

Kosta Karakashyan 24:44

Yeah, but for me, I kind of feel like not all of my work as an artist is, you know, now this year after  creating the show with Greenpeace, I gave myself a bit of permission to also create some work for fun  that is dealing with whatever I find curious now, but if I'm doing a larger project, I kind of need this layer  because it's, I feel it's part of who I am as a person. Now I find it hard to get excited about other things  when there's so much going on in the world. And, you know, creating a film or a dance performance is  so, so expensive, and you use up resources. So if we are doing it might as well be helping out a topic  or a cause that we feel passionate about, I kind of need this little motivation to then start imagining what the work can be. And from a human rights perspective, I think they can be a lot of distrust in the  beginning, when you're meeting artists, you sometimes people have had some more negative  experience with artists, and maybe about things like work ethic, or timeliness, or confidentiality are all of  these things that as human rights professionals we are very adamant about. And there is artists who  much better understand the type of work that needs to be created in this context. And then there are  artists who, you know, just want to create what they want to create, and they don't take into account  these things. So I think it's just a matter of finding the right people. And then a lot of those issues will  iron themselves out if you know, the artist is also good at understanding the type of information that's  important and key to the NGO.

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Veronique Lerch 26:56

Yeah, I think it always goes back to the idea of community and coalition building and finding the right  people in for the work, we wanted to go further. And also was in bringing them closer to you. I mean,  they might be skeptical at the beginning, but I'm sure you know, with all the background that you have  now you can really convince them, you know.

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Kosta Karakashyan 27:16

yeah, it's always conversation. Now I'm working on a dance project with children with Down syndrome.  And when I was asked to create something with them, I was really excited, but also very nervous about  how the process would go. And the first conversations with the organization that is teaching them full  time, every day, I felt the people were also a bit worried about bringing a new person, a new energy in,  but I had to calm myself down, that is gonna be fine. And then give them that confidence. And then the  process was amazing and so rewarding, but I felt it on both sides. We all wanted it to be really good.  And that was making us nervous about each other a little bit.

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Veronique Lerch 28:07

But I think it's a good sign, you know that that means? Are you really taking it seriously? And do you  want the best for those children and you just don't want to use them for a process but you want them to  be part of the process. So I think the nervousness is, I think is a good sign.

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Kosta Karakashyan 28:22

Yeah, definitely.  

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Veronique Lerch 28:23

you mentioned before, you know, like, how much you know, when you do a big piece and you give  yourself a little bit of freedom to do something a little bit lighter maybe after that. So I'm actually  wondering, we know that working with issues like this is that human rights issue can be very heavy it's  a lot when we think about your first film it's a very heavy topic, but Chechnya and the torture there. So  do you have any saying you know, that helps you to to bring your mood or to take care of your mental  health like music I ask this to everybody like music poem book, an activity that helps you to get  grounded and feel safe.

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Kosta Karakashyan 29:05

Yeah, the thing that makes me feel most grounded in general is reading I love reading and getting lost  in anything like fiction or nonfiction I read a lot and I have a huge stack of books waiting to be read but  also in general, because of dance I'm, you know, such a big music person as well. I make a lot of  playlists and specifically when I'm feeling overwhelmed, I listen to a lot of instrumental music. It doesn't  necessarily have to be classical but just something that has nice melody and soothing quality. I think  things that have a groove and a beat will always you know excited is excited or body but they have a lot  of playlists with just very gentle music. So whenever I'm even when I'm working and overwhelmed and I  know I have a lot of tasks to do a put on some classical music that really helps me focus my mind. And  because you specifically asked, I did suggest one song, my favorite song that I don't want to say a  mantra, but it's kind of a message that I really like. It's a song by Billy Joel called Vienna, where he says  Vienna waits for you. So the whole song he's singing that you can slow down and just take things at  your own pace, and the city of Vienna will be there. And you know, life will go on, you don't have to  achieve everything today. And that's something I really struggle with. I make a lot of overly optimistic  plans about how much I can get done. So yeah, that's something I try to remind myself,

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Veronique Lerch 30:58

Oh, I can relate to that. The conception of time and what you can do in a day, yeah. Yeah, we'll put a  link to that song on the page. That sounds like a very appropriate and beautiful song. I wonder if you  have any other advice you could give to either an artist who wants to put more human rights in their  work or a human rights graduates who wants to use creative tools to do the work? You know, what do  they need to know to do that work?

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Kosta Karakashyan 31:31

For the artists, I would say a lot of listening in the beginning. So when I did my project about Chechnya,  I started going to a few activist groups in New York that I knew were kind of trying to put pressure from  outside Russia, and from outside Chechnya, on the government there. So I went to a lot of meetings  and listen, then, like I met people, Russian people who were in New York, who could give us more of  like, they were connected on the ground to people there. So they had more information that was close  from source. And then I checked in with a lot of organizations. The report that we use came from the  Russian LGBT network, it is publicly available, because sometimes as artists, we feel we're used to  working with small teams with no budget or little budget. So we feel like we have to create and invent  everything. But when we're working with human rights, there's actually you know, so much that the  organizations are already doing in terms of communicating the message. So we need to be able to  listen with real attention to detail and not spin it in the first creative direction that we feel like it could go,  it's very tempting to, you know, exaggerate or make something more dramatic for artistic purposes, but  you have to stay true to the mission so that the work you're doing as an artist is credible, and then the  organizations can also stand behind it. So if you're an artist, you would, you know, start meeting people  working within the human rights sector and asking where they think art could be part of the whole  picture, for example, the Bulgarian Fund for Women, it's an NGO that helps women fight domestic  violence, gender inequality in Bulgaria, or types of women's issues. And every year, they have a small  grant program for artists who want to work on these topics. And by them doing this open code, they're  already, you know, guiding the artists to think in this direction, which I think is amazing. Because as an artist, you know, if you win this funding, you're already going to be collaborating with their team closely.  And if they select your idea, then they already believe in the potential of this idea to be relevant to their mission. And then on the NGO side, I think it's maybe about creating spaces for artists to come  together and play. There's a really amazing organization here in Bulgaria called fine acts. They're a  global creative studio that works with human rights and artists. And they do a lot of events where they  bring artists together to work on a topic, but it's more playful, like they educate the artists what the issue  is, and you get to try your muscles at creating something but there is no pressure to make the work that  will tackle this issue, but just to experiment and see if you are a good fit for the things that they're trying  to communicate right now.

Veronique Lerch 34:53

Wow, great. I mean, that's really great advice and all the possible ways in which we can collaborate  better as we said, I think there's a lot we can learn from dance for our work. And I remember you said in  our conversation before that dance is a very gentle art form. And I think we can hear that in what you're  saying, you know, that there is a lot, we can learn in terms of taking care of each other and creating  safety for others. So yeah, I think a lot of similarity between processes we need in human rights and  what you're doing in dance. I don't know if you have any final concluding words or something you want  to share with people listening to this podcast.

Kosta Karakashyan 35:36

For everyone listening, I would say, you know, go and support your local artists. It's a very hard career  as human rights and making something and putting it out in the world is very vulnerable. And no matter  how big or successful an artist may seem, it's always a big struggle to make things. So if you have the  

chance and the opportunity, go and see a show or say thank you to an artist who is doing something  because it gives them the drive to keep going.

Veronique Lerch 36:13

And we could add to that pays the artists as well. Definitely. Thank you so much for this wonderful  conversation. And yeah, we'll put the information as always on the page for people to look at your work.  Thank you.

Kosta Karakashyan 36:29

Thank you. It was my pleasure.