WORLDS APART It’s a long way from the U.S.
Figure Skating Championships to Tajikistan, but that’s where 2002 U.S. novice ice dance champion Sarah Solomon finds herself. Solo- mon is in Dushanbe on a Critical Language Scholarship, a U.S. State Department–sponsored
program.
Te connection, though, is dance: Central Asian dance, to be specific. It’s a long story. Solomon won the 2002 novice
title with partner Benjamin Cohen; Meryl Davis and Charlie White won the silver. At the 2004 U.S. Cham- pionships, with her new partner Andrew Smith, Solomon suffered a partial tear of her medial collateral ligament during a practice session,
withdrew from the competition and retired from skating. Solomon enrolled at the Uni-
versity of Maryland, but she found that she missed dancing. “After I quit skating I was pretty
burned out,” she said, by Skype from Dushanbe. “Eventually I found my- self going a little stir-crazy without any kind of outlet. I was looking for ballet classes, and instead I found a place that offered Central Asian dance.”
As an ice dancer, Solomon had taken many different kinds of dance but Central Asian dance was new to her. (Central Asia generally refers to the five former Soviet republics: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan,
Sarah Solomon performs a Tajik dance as a member of the Silk Road Dance Company.
Different kind of dance draws Sarah Solomon to Central Asia by SARAH S. BRANNEN
Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.) “Te teacher of the class was the
artistic director of Silk Road Dance Company,” Solomon said. “I joined the company and I started falling in love with the dance.” Silk Road Dance Company
performs traditional and contempo- rary women’s dances from Central Asia, and Solomon soon found that the dance company was expanding her horizons. “I’d been with the company for
a year and I had the opportunity to go to Uzbekistan to perform in a UNESCO international dance festi- val,” she said. “Tat’s when I decided that I wanted to have a career in in- ternational affairs in Central Asia.” After college, Solomon got a
master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University in international relations, concentrating in international law, conflict management and interna- tional economics. Surprisingly, Solomon is not the only former ice dancer in Du- shanbe on a Critical Language Scholarship. Former U.S. junior competitor Mark Jahnke was also there this summer, studying Farsi and Tajik. “Dushanbe
is a spectacular-
ly beautiful city,” Jahnke wrote in an email. “Even though it’s around 100 degrees every day, we still take the time to slow down and walk ev- erywhere. It’s a different pace of life from the U.S.” Solomon just returned from dancing in the “Roof of the World” festival
in Khorog, in the Pamir
mountains of Tajikistan. “I’ve been working with the Ta- jik cultural initiative, and I’ve been learning Pamir dance,” she said. “Tey asked me to go and perform. It’s been amazing, the reaction I get. Tey can’t imagine that an American would be so interested in their cul- ture as to learn their dances. When you demonstrate that you have a deeper understanding in someone’s culture, it can help with diplomacy. Dance has been the key to getting to know people and experience the country.”
When she returned home in 42 OCTOBER 2013
Sarah Solomon in Dushanbe, Tajikistan
August, Solomon began looking for a job in Washington, D.C. She says she is interested in going into gov- ernment or diplomatic work. “I’ve thought about going into
the foreign service,” she said. “Right now I’m really interested in working for some government agency spe- cializing in human rights issues in Central Asia. I’ve taken coursework related to human trafficking.” It seems likely that Solomon will continue to be involved in Cen- tral Asian dance and the arts of the region. She hopes to raise awareness of the area in a positive way. “A lot of people just see a blank space on the map between Iraq and Russia, India and China,” she said. “My mother went around her office and said that if anyone knew the capital of Tajikistan she would bake them a chocolate cake. No cake was baked!”
PHOTO COURTESY OF SARAH SOLOMON
JOHN G. WALTER
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