Biography Rana Gorgani

Born in Germany, Rana Gorgani spent her adolescence in France where she quickly joined different theater groups. At 14, she traveled for the first time to Iran, her parents' country of origin, and discovered the mystical Sufi universe thanks to Daf (a drum accompanying the ritual songs) and Sufi dance. Essentially practiced by men, the whirling dervishes, it is distinguished by a continuous rotary movement leading the body into a modified state of consciousness. It's a revelation for her. A return to basics. While continuing to travel to Iran, where her thirst for spirituality led her to join Sufi brotherhoods, she continued her French education. With her literary baccalaureate in hand, she was admitted to the Paris Conservatory of Dramatic Arts, where she trained in acting and directing. From that time on, she understood the capital role played by costumes in a show.

After only one year at the conservatory, he was asked to teach people with disabilities, but also teenagers. A founding experience of transmission, which will serve her when she then has to make known Sufi dance, almost unknown at its beginnings in the West. From his theater years, Rana Gorgani will keep the quest for truth in his way of dancing. And the taste for refined gestures. HAS 21 years, she participates in the show of an Iranian director in which she dances fleetingly. The audience only seems to remember this moment. It's there that Rana Gorgani realizes that with this art she can touch people's hearts. She left everything to settle in Iran and followed the teaching of a Sufi master in order to deepen her knowledge of the Samâ dance (“spiritual listening”), another name for Sufi dance.

When in 2009, she founded the association L'Œil persan, she already gave lectures on Persian culture and began to become one of the world's references in the field.

En 2016, she obtained a master's degree in dance anthropology and ethnomusicology. For her memoir, she lived in the desert with nomadic dervishes from Iran. Awakened to the power of the immaterial, she then becomes aware of the beauty of a sunset or the value of water. Back in France, she wanted to fully devote her life, and her art, to Sufi dance. And no longer wants to perform other Persian dances where, according to her, the dancer is performing. She wants to “be” rather than “appear”.

Rana Gorgani: Sufi Dancer and Creator of Unique Performances

Rana Gorgani dance, but also creates costumes and choreographies for unique works that play on the boundaries between genres.

En 2017, she opens her art of trance by working with contemporary dance or circus companies.

She will dance to electronic music, classical, jazz, etc.

It was during this period that she no longer went on stage with a veil, as is done in Iran to break with the folkloric side.

Strong in keeping her artistic freedom, she also refuses to become a Sufi master and leaves the brotherhoods.

En 2018, she collaborated with the Haïdouti Orkestar, a Turkish orchestra of Balkan music, and danced at the Opéra Garnier for the seventieth anniversary of Longchamp.

The whirling dervish travels a lot to promote the Samâ dance. The one who remains one of the few Sufi artists to perform in public regularly organizes performances and participates in numerous festivals. Far from dogma and always in this desire for openness, she strives in her teaching to shed light on the philosophical aspect of Sufism in order to be able to reach as many people as possible. To transmit this practice, which she defines as the expression of the joy of being in motion on Earth, she uses a rigorous initiatory dance technique inspired by the rituals of the Sufi brotherhoods and mixes poetry and song with the dance. In his workshops or retreats, it invites you to travel within…