Politics aside, the tradition of Iranian music and dance will live on by educating and entertaining audiences in a folkloric performance.

Eastern Arts presents Worldance 2009: Iran Zamin, honoring Robert de Warren, performing tonight at 7 p.m. at Kingsbury Hall at the University of Utah.

The performance will feature folk dancers from BYU, Eastern Arts International Dance Theatre and AVA Persian Music Ensemble.

“Eastern Arts has been doing this show for about 20 years and we have been at Kingsbury Hall for about 10 of that and we have done world dance featuring different countries in Eurasia, countries with a large Muslim community,” said Katherine St. John, director of Eastern Arts.

“We present this concert to the public to serve both the general public and immigrants and refugees from the countries that we represent.”

This production can be broken down into three different categories of Iranian dance: tribal or rural folk dances, court dances, which represents a time of monarch leadership and spiritual or mystic dances, influenced by Sufism. All of the styles are unique to Iran.

The first 20 minutes of the performance is Persian classical music and the dance program will follow.

The costumes to be worn by the BYU folk dancers are from Salt Lake City’s Kurdish community.  This clothing is still worn to parties and events.

“We try not to be overtly political or religious but you can’t escape it when you are doing music or dance from that area and it is often rooted in Islam or pre-Islamic traditions,” St. John said. “I hope that we could encourage people to open their minds about Iran and about the arts of the ordinary people of Iran, politics and religion aside.”

Dance flourished in Iran at the time that Robert de Warren founded Iran’s National Folk Dance Ensemble, Mahalli Dancers, 30 years ago. He was able to work very closely with the Shah for 11 years until the revolution when everything was destroyed because such entertainment was no longer approved by the government.

“The Shah of Iran had been booted out of his own country by the Muslim clerics and leaders because they believed he was making the country too Western and that Iran was losing its Persian heritage,” St. John said. “Although he really tried through Robert de Warren to maintain the original music and dance, the clerics basically ran him out.”

De Warren founded Iran-Das Inc., a nonprofit organization to try to rescue and preserve the materials that are left so that it will remain for the next generation.

“BYU contacted me last year to come and do something,” de Warren said. “So I looked at some of the Kurdish dances and gave tips to make them more how the Kurdish people would dance them, because the trouble is, many times one restages these things and one loses the folkloric nature of the country themselves. It becomes more of a performance in a sense.”