Laurel Victoria Gray

LAUREL VICTORIA GRAY
"Enlightenment through Dance" TM

An award-winning dancer, scholar, educator, and choreographer, Laurel Victoria Gray is "the pioneer of Uzbek dance in America." Her efforts to preserve and present traditional Central Asian and Persian dance make her a true cultural diplomat.

Laurel Victoria Gray is the recipient of the 2006 Metro DC Dance Award for Excellence in Costume Design and the 2005 Distinguished Service Award from the Embassy of Uzbekistan. In the 2003, her ancient Egyptian dance work, Egypta: Myth, Magic, and Mystery , won the Kennedy Center Local Dance Commissioning Project Award. She has also been awarded the International Academy of Middle Eastern Dance (IAMED) Awards for Best Choreographer (2003) and Best Ethnic Dancer (1999);some of her Azerbaijani,Russian Roma (Gypsy), Georgian and Persian dance choreographies have been archived on the IAMED concert videos.

Gray is the Artistic Director of the Silk Road Dance Company (SRDC) a Joy of Motion Company-in-Residence, which specializes in Central Asian,Turkic,Arabic and Persian dance. Gray also directs Ensemble Mumtaz, a student ensemble.

In 1984, Gray founded the Uzbek Dance and Culture Society and in 1994, established the annual Central Asian Dance Camp. She has traveled to Uzbekistan eleven times, living there for two years at the invitation of Tashkent's State Academic Bolshoi Theater and appearing on television dance programs over a dozen times. She was a member of the jury for the 1997 Sharq Taronalari Festival and for the 1993 Uzbekistan Puppet Theater Festival.

In March 2006, Laurel Victoria Gray was invited to Azerbaijan by that country’s government to participate as a guest in a World Congress; the trip allowed her to deepen her knowledge of Azerbaijani dance.

Gray's scholarly articles on Central Asian dance have appeared in many publications including the Oxford University Press International Encyclopedia of Dance, the World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theater and the Encyclopedia of Modern Asia and Dance Magazine as well as journals in Germany and Australia. She has lectured on Middle Eastern, Central Asian, and Persian dance and culture for the Middle East Institute, Humanities West, The Embassy of Egypt, the Assembly of Turkish American Associations, the First and Second International Conferences on Middle Eastern dance as well as the 2006 Inaugural Conference on Near and Middle Eastern Dance.

Laurel Victoria Gray's performances of Uzbek, Arabic, Roma (Gypsy) and Persian dance have graced Warner Bros , the National Press Club, the Smithsonian , the National Geographic Society, the Secret Service, the State Department, and numerous embassies, museums, universities and numerous Iranian, Egyptian, and Turkish organizations. She has been a guest instructor in Uzbek and Persian dance at the majorU.S. Middle Eastern dance camps. Gray was an education outreach instructor for New York's City Center Theater in 1990, introducing thousands of students to Georgian dance and also gave instruction in Persian dance at the Iranian Community School in Vienna, VA.

Laurel Victoria Gray has inspired thousands of students, giving workshops and concerts in Central Asian and Persian dance throughout Europe, Central Asia, Australia, the United States and Canada. Her own teachers include Qizlarhon Dustmuhamedova, Viktoria Akilova, Galia Ismailova, Tamara Khanum, Kadir Muminov, Yusuf Qasimov, Shamiran Urshan, Mahmoud Reda, Ahmed Jarjour, Ercument Kilic, Mujgan Ergil, Shamiran Urshan, Madame Nellie Mazloum, Nadia Hamdi and others.

Her recent works include, Haft Paykar: Seven Beauties (2005), a folkloric ballet with Indian, Turkic, Chinese, Arabic and Persian dance sequences;it is based on a 12th century poem by Nizami Gajavi. Most recently she premiered The Golden Road to Samarkand (2006).

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