Tamara Khanum


Tamara Khanum was an Uzbek dancer of Armenian origin, notable for being the first woman in Uzbekistan to successfully perform publicly and without a veil. Tamara Khanum was a colleague of ill-fated Uzbek dancer Nurkhon Yuldasheva, who was murdered in an honor killing for taking off her veil onstage.

Early life

Khanum was born as Tamara Artyomovna Petrosyan to an Armenian family in the Uzbek city of Margilan in the Ferghana valley of Central Asia, then part of the Russian Empire. Khanum showed interest in dance as a child, singing and dancing to Uzbek folk songs. In 1919 she joined the mobile theater troupe of the Turkestan front led by Hamza Niyazi.

Career

In 1921 she joined the Tashkent Russian opera and ballet theater named after Ya. Sverdlov, after which she joined the Tashkent Ballet troupe in 1922. In 1924 she graduated from the Central Technical School of Theater Arts in Moscow.
Khanum's dancing had a profound effect on American writer Langston Hughes, who wrote a 1934 article, "Tamara Khanum: Soviet Asia's Greatest Dancer," which praised Khanum for her performances and for breaking cultural taboos by appearing on stage.

Legacy

was created in 1994.