Articles

TRICHK Dancing Flight, Memory, and Becoming

Trichk: Dancing Flight, Memory, and Becoming

 

Shakeh Major Tchilingirian

 

Grapevine, September 2025; pp. 14-16.

 

There was dance before there were words.

 

In Armenian, we say “Baren araj kar bar” — movement came before speech. This truth lives in my bones and deepens with every piece I create. Dance has always been my way of speaking, of remembering, of becoming.

 

Trichk, which means “flight” in Armenian, did not arrive in a moment of clarity. It lingered in the quiet, asking questions I wasn’t ready to answer. It brewed in my body, stirred in my spirit, waited patiently. Then, one summer, far from the noise of daily life, I found myself alone – with silence, with breath, with music that had lived inside me for months. I hadn’t planned to choreograph. But I moved — and Trichk moved through me.

 

This dance is a journey: an ascent through struggle, a soaring of spirit, a song of resilience shared in motion. It speaks to what it means to remain aloft when the winds turn rough — to fly not just for oneself, but with and for others. To dance in community is to remember we are never truly alone. Trichk became a celebration of that memory – of being lifted, and lifting in return.

 

My choreography always begins with roots. Armenian folk dance is etched into my body. It is not decoration — it is storytelling, ritual, devotion in motion. It is where I return for grounding, for remembering, for truth.

 

Reading the work of ethnographer Naira Kilichyan on the evolution of staged Armenian folk dance reminded me: this art form has never stood still. What began in the villages — rites of harvest, of mourning, of joy – transformed on the stage, infused with new forms, new transitions. Yet always, it held fast to its essence. The vocabulary remained sacred, even as the grammar evolved. This is the legacy I honour: to innovate without severing the line of memory.

 

Even the word trichk carries layered meaning. It means both “hop” and “flight” — a modest gesture that contains the infinite. The late dance ethnographer Gagik Ginosyan wrote that in ancient Armenia, birds were sacred messengers — souls in motion, traversing the space between heaven and earth. Unlike lions, who ruled the ground, birds were free, transcendent. Their wings carried prayers. Their flight carried memory.

 

So it’s no surprise that even our dance language echoes them: tev (arm, wing), tevel (to sway), barel (to dance), kakavel (to fly). To dance, then, is to rise. To lift out of the ordinary and into the sacred.

 

In shoror dances – with their rooted steps and swaying torsos – I feel that ancestry. These are meditations in motion, gestures of reverence, offerings for the elders and the unseen. They are not performances. They are embodied prayer. Srbuhi Lisitsyan’s Kinetografia reminds us that every movement carries meaning. This is how we remember. This is how we endure.

 

Many of my recent works are born from silence — from what cannot be said, or what spills over words. In those moments, the body speaks. Dance becomes both a revelation and a refuge.

 

Trichk came with questions, not answers:

 

How do we remain in motion when the weight of life pulls us down?

How do we lift one another through the invisible currents of joy and sorrow?

How do we keep flying – together?

 

The premiere of Trichk in Little Wenlock, Shropshire, in October 2024, felt like a homecoming. It was received with warmth, with open arms. Since then, it has taken flight – across stages, across hearts. If Trichk were the last dance I ever created, I would feel at peace. It feels that complete.

 

Months after the premiere, I showed a recording of Trichk to my elderly mother. I said nothing, only mentioned the beauty of the music. She watched in silence. Then she turned to me and said, “This is the dance I want when I leave this world.”

 

I hadn’t expected her to say that. But it made perfect sense. To her, Trichk was the soul taking flight — the release, the rising, the wing-like gestures that spoke of something beyond the body. In that moment, the dance transformed again. I saw a new ending: wings lifting, the soul ascending, carried by love and light.

 

Trichk is not about death. It is about living – fully, fiercely — in the face of impermanence.

 

Pema Chödrön writes, “Life is a series of goodbyes.” But rather than resisting them, she invites us to embrace each as an opening. To move through transitions not with fear, but with grace.

 

Trichk is that invitation.

 

To dance.

To live.

To trust the flight.

To leap without knowing the landing.

To fly with courage.

To love, and to let go.

 

It is a call to remember that we are birds of one flock – meant to lift and be lifted.

 

There is no true kindness without self-compassion. That is where the dance begins: within. From that tenderness, we expand. We move for each other, with each other, as each other.

 

So I ask, as Chödrön does: Are you willing to truly live while you are here?