Farima Berenji | Connecting to Traditional Sacred Dance
Farima Berenji is an award winning, internationally acclaimed performing artist with a lifelong passion for dance and its ability to bring meaning and spirituality to our lives. She is also a deeply talented dance ethnologist and archaeologist, and a rare world expert and scholar of Persian dance history. A third generation artist, she travels worldwide to record, research, lecture, perform, educate, and to inspire creativity through dance and movement.
Berenji is the founder and artistic director of the Farima Dance Company and the worldwide Simorgh Dance Collective. She has spent her life studying, researching, and performing with master teachers and performing artists throughout the world, including her home countries of Iran and Azerbaijan, as well as other Silk Road countries. Her passion for dance in general, and more specifically the sacred, classical, and folk dances of the Silk Road have led her on a stunning journey learning, teaching, promoting, and performing for audiences all over the world.
She has received many awards for excellence, cultural diplomacy and preservation, and for expertise of leadership from performing arts communities. As the recipient of the prestigious UN/UNA award, she is celebrated for her dance ethnology research and globally advocating dance education, inspiring positive personal and social change, as well as advocating dance history and dance archaeological preservation. She is the first Iranian-American to perform live at the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, Turkey, first Iranian-American woman to perform and be recognized by the National Folk Dance Organization of America, and her Simorgh Dance Collective was the first Iranian dance company, directed by an Iranian woman to perform during a reception for President Obama.