Armen Ohanian

After a short stint at the Tbilisi Opera in 1909, where she appeared for the first time as Armen Ohanian, she traveled again to Iran, where she performed as a dancer and actress during the last period of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution.

By using methods of "free dance" developed by the famous American dancer Isadora Duncan, she created her own choreography based on Armenian and Iranian music.

Many of her dances, such as "Salome," "At the Temple of Anahit," "Treason," "The Matchmaker," "Haschich," "The Great Khan of Shamakha," "Towards Nirvana," and others, fascinated the European public.

[1] She performed extensively in London, Paris, Brussels, Milan, Sofia, Madrid, and other European cities, as well as in the United States and Mexico.

Her performances were widely covered in the press and met the approval of writers such as Maurice Maeterlinck, René Ghil, Claude Anet, and others.

She later published other memoirs in French, such as In the Claws of Civilization in 1921, The Laughs of A Snake Charmer in 1931; an account of her 1927 sojourn in the Soviet Union, In the Sixth Part of the World: Journey into Russia in 1928; and a novel, The Soloist of His Majesty, in 1929.

During a second visit to the Soviet Union in 1958 with her husband, they traveled briefly to Yerevan, where she offered part of her private files to the Museum of Literature and Arts.

Depiction of Armen Ohanian on the Spanish edition of the book Dancers of Shamakha , 1921
Portrait of Armen Ohanian by Emile Bernard , 1913