Iran's best-known female dancer and 24 of her students have been detained on charges of dancing in public — for an all-female audience, her husband said Thursday. Although there are no written laws against dancing, Iran's hard-line clerics have banned the activity, which they consider a promotion of moral corruption.
| Y'know, I don't think they feel shame like we do... |
Farzaneh Kaboli and 24 of her students were detained Wednesday night as they were performing folk dances on the second night of a two-week program at Tehran's prestigious Vahdat Hall, Hadi Marzban said.
| Folk dances! How... ummm... what a snoozer. |
Marzban said the students were freed Thursday after signing statements pledging not to perform again but Kaboli was taken to Evin Prison, north of Tehran. "It was a program of rhythmical movements displaying folk dance of various provinces of Iran to an all-female audience. The program had been authorized by the Culture Ministry," a distressed Marzban told The Associated Press. Marzban said efforts by pro-reform government authorities failed to prevent police from taking Kaboli to prison. She has not yet been charged.
| Hopefully she hasn't been beaten to death yet... |
Judicial officials were not available for comment, as Thursday is the first day of the weekend in Iran. Marzban, an actor, insisted that his wife did not teach dancing. "She was not teaching dance. She was just displaying various rhythmical programs existing in different parts of Iran," he said.
| "No, no! Certainly not! Anybody got any Blistex?" |
Although Kaboli has acted in some films shown on hard-line-controlled state-run television, she was banned from working for several years in the 1990s after the circulation of a video that showed her dancing before a male audience in a private party. Kaboli's dance programs, available on bootlegged video, are widely watched by Iranian women. |