DANCING KAMAZHAY.

ETHNICITY, GENDER AND ARTS MANAGEMENT IN BRANDING

A COUNTRY

Nicolae Stanciu, Ph.D.

Research Center "Discourse Theory and Practice", "Dunărea de Jos" University of Galați, Romania
Buketov Karaganda State University, Kazakhstan

Abstract
Following the narrow path of cultural management and underlining the role of dances in branding a country as a tourist
destination, this paper aims at analysing, in an intermingling modality, some aspects of Kazakh national dance called Kamazhay
thus expressing an ambiguous discourse on ethnicity and nation building. Despite a great ideological construct meant to frame the
government in Kazakhstan in the stream of contemporary history, the decision makers have not acknowledged the importance of
dance performance in pointing out specificity and the complexity of the process which will take a long time to implement. In
connecting the dance with other seldom tackled aspects of anthropology such as cuisine, gender, hospitality, this article points out
the role played by arts in setting the cultural dimension of corporate culture and in conveying meaning in a continuously
globalizing world and a competitive economy.

1. Introduction: Cultural background

In the past two decades, after spliting from the Soviet Union and gaining independence, a process of
defining ethnicity by assimilating international models for country development has started in Kazakstan.
However, it still remains unclear why cultural management, corporate culture and branding strategies
have not been implemented in this country, which has apparently recorded an economic boom. Moreover,
this niche of arts management has not evolved too much as it has remained at the conceptual phase of
acknowledging the importance of branding in economic development and in becoming a competitive
player on the global market. Despite the fact that the first president, Nursultan Nazarbayev has designed
some lines of national branding as ‘the country of endless steppe’ comprising culture, economy, history,
geography, international relations, the governement has not succeeded in setting the real terms of
sustainable reforms meant to transform this state from Central Asia into one of the most competitive and
modern economies. In fact, only some timid steps have been taken for the implementation of otherwise
generous and well-shaped multi-level program, which, on the one hand, is cultivating multi-ethnic
tolerance and, on the other hand, is supposed to strenghten the ties among people of different
nationalities. The program also updates people’s knowledge by reinforcing the role of cultural and
religious traditions and enhancing their motivation in becoming internationally competitive. Considered
the expression of a great civilizational endeavour for defining ‘Kazakhness’ (Mkrtchyan 2014) at the
moment, cultural policies are still interfering with ‘nationhood building’ (Kassenov 2016: 11) and ‘global
branding’ (idem : 24) resulting in ‘ambiguity of its state building and oscillating between civic and ethnic
nationalism’ (Beacháni & Kvlihani 2011: 11). This process of building ethnicity through differentiating
national culture from the others in the area and developing the economy may benefit to a large extent
from acquisitions in the field of anthropology and cultural management, where the importance of story
creation and telling has been recognized as a branding tool of great value. What surprises everyone at first
glance in Central Asia, mostly in Kazakhstan with all its regions, a space populated by less than 20
million people is, on the one side, novelty and, on the other side, unity in variety in many regards. In
some quite young country-states whose recent history possibly spans not more than some hundred years,
live together more than 130 nationalities. Most people are of Turkic origins and Muslim faith who have
come from the South part of the land to the North or moved from Altai Mountains westward, settling
down in these large territories and are now divided into some nations. The history has divided these
Turkic people into two categories, namely inland and outland. The first one comprises people inhabiting
the above-mentioned state (Kazakhstan), bounded by identical languages, the same religion and similar
folklore and historical traditions. Their vestigial elements reverberate either in dances, horse cult,
inhumation techniques or in the names of people and places. Another community of Uyghurs has been
living in Western China and it resembles in many regards the destiny of other oases inhabited by Turkic
people in Europe like Gagauz in Moldavia. The heritage of nomadic traditions filtered by Russian tsarist
and post-soviet lenses has blown up in an attempt to underline the originality of a struggle for defining
specificity in the wide frame of cultural identity revealing the richness of symbols and the nobility of
performers.
The main purpose of this paper was to research the role of a dance in framing ethnic realities and
helping with purposefully branding a country by interpreting tangential concepts of cultural anthropology
like costumes, cuisine and hospitality customs and underline their role in building ethnicity. Therefore,
my research combines anthropological concepts such as branding, ethnicity and gender concepts,
cognitive poetic and functional communicative perspectives including techniques such as interviews and
discourse analysis in the most comprehensive acceptation of dance as ‘silent language’ (Hall 1959).

2. Conception and methodology

In a continuously globalizing, multi-ethnic and sometimes weird world, there is a pressing need for
building up, defining and differentiating ethnicities together with cultivating tolerance and mutual
understanding accross cultures. I assert that significant cultural directions like cuisine, dances, history,
hospitality and language play a very important role in contemporary societies because they can determine
cultural dynamics, facilitate ethnic thought development and, in a wider context, even guide nations in
their endeavour to find specificity. If in the case of history, language and religion the government
designed and granted ‚generous programs’ (Smagulova 2010: 462), it would take a while to assume the
importance of dances in both parts of instruction and performance as an ethnicty anchor to promote the
national theme as a modality of branding the country as an original tourist destination, in addition
underlining Kazakh spirituality as different from the others. However, civil society through numerous
cultural associations, private and state universities have looked at mandatory use of dance performance in
their current attempts to celebrate the main events of the year, to welcome foreigners as guests and to add
to the ambiance of cuisine, hospitality and gender dimensions.
As an anthropologist I enjoy analysing the role of dance as a performing art and other related cultural
fields in conceptualizing societal trends and shaping the identity of this Muslim and Turkic nation. The
main challenge of my research is to demonstrate how anthropological, functional-cognitive and folklore
tools can be successfully used to asses discourse ideology brought into play by movement and
performance of a precisely defined gender and ethnic group and how some cultural phenomena like
cuisine, hospitality and tourism branding started being considered and integrated in the big picture of
national ethnicity. To address all the aspects of a comprehensive research I incorporated some specific
methods like dance, costume and performance description, surveys carried out among the performers and
policy makers who acknowledged the importance of dance in branding, spectators’ and personal opinions
expressed in narratives on performance thus combining a two-fold perspective: an inner one, resulting in
elicitation of opinions from the performers and an exterior one consisting the view on the dance watched
by outsiders who are either policy makers, cultural managers or spectators.
In addition, I set three main limitations: I focused on female youth dancers since they had been
involved in performing the national Kazakh dance during the celebrations or main cultural manifestations
organized in public spaces like squares or inside of universities and who have gotten the highest level of
awareness regarding the importance of this element of specificity in branding the country.
I mostly explored the dance ideology (cultural meaning, symbolism) in connection with other aspects
of community life: cuisine, hospitality, traditions and finally the pride of being a female of Kazakh
ethnicity, who perform the dance in various contexts while assuming a role in family and society life. As
a matter of fact, I worked with an ethnic and regional community instead of attempting a nationwide
analysis but I followed the extrapolation of these cultural trends to other regions of the country. Over the
last five years, I have collected a wealth of data related to dance performance among young generations
of students, adults and elderly people from cultural administrative bodies and policy makers. Analyzing
all these interviews and narratives I could draw some ideas about the dance significations, costumes
symbolism and the role of the performers in folklore and hospitality traditions as main tracks of ethnicity
having been used in underlining Kazakh specificity. It has led me to design three main aspects of dance
significance before I could speak about matters of ethnic and societal significance.
First, I had to establish a cultural context by grasping the main issues of branding Kazakhstan as a
tourist destination derived from the policies that have been designed in the last two decades and in the
process of being implemented. Reviewed literature on the topics of ethnicity, language, history and
economy showed a lack of information and even an absence of research regarding dances, hospitality and
language as anchors of ethnicity. My main challenge in this regard was to describe and point out the
importance of a national dance in the multi-ethnic settings of contemporary Kazakhstan.
 Second, I considered concepts like the community of practice and political ideological sets as main
approaches to dance research. Although I looked at a quite stable academic, folk and political community
I have noticed the common endeavour of students and scholars who participated in academic mobilities
programs to use performance, mostly dance, cuisine and hospitality as mobile sources to underline
identity and to convey meaning to the world. They reported using costumes, dances and welcoming
strategies to point out their ethnic and national specificity.
Third, I considered issues of gender in cultural power and status differences in dance performance by
researching the role of females in a society dominated by males. Since I have used ethnic communities of
practice as an analyzing and interpretation method of cognitive frames or scenes, I noticed differences in
power within the main groups in question: females as performers, males as decision makers and both
genders among the spectators. Therefore, I decided to intentionally explore cultural prestige dynamics. As
I have done some previous researches on gender (Alberti & Stanciu 2016) using anthropological methods,
I needed to consider the promotion of females in dancing performance in a society of ‘masculine
domination’.
From this initial standpoint of wondering what is going to happen with this dance in the Kazakh
society and how much it will be considered as a modality to brand the country and to underline ethnicity,
I moved to interviewing three main target groups: students from five universities, members and
representatives of civil society, mostly so-called ethnic association, and decision makers in the field,
mainly cultural administrators and managers as well as politicians from three main areas: the former
capital Almaty, the new capital Astana, recently renamed as Nur-Sultan and the capital of the largest
region, Karaganda.
The red thread I have chosen to design and follow through my article is analyzing and interpreting
dance signification in the wider context of ethnicity as a modality to convey meaning, to spread around
positive energies and overall, to reinforce other indexes of identity like costumes, cuisine, hospitality and
symbols. Expressing a political commitment to cultural development, managing arts and branding the
country, the government and presidency decided to use dance performance in a variety of contexts meant
to display the traditional and modern character of this heritage recovery.
In summary, I will seek to develop a three-fold research that can be used in postgraduate seminars of
anthropology, folklore and cognitive sciences as well, based on the metaphorical dimensions and ethnic
signification of a silent cultural phenomenon: the Kazakh national dance called Kamazhay and some
other related cultural aspects taken from cuisine, garments and hospitality industry woven in a texture
meant to offer a ‘thick description’ (Geertz 1973: 12) of a cultural phenomenon.

3. Results and discussion

Dances are activities comprising ‘purposeful, intentional rhythmical movement and encoding
patterned sequences of non-verbal body movements’ (Hanna 1987: 17) distinct from other motion
performances by the time, space and implicit effort, having inherent aesthetic value and mimetic
potential. The main dimensions of dances are defined in the text (as designed movement) but also in the
cultural context (the meaning conveyed from performer to audience, cultural and ethnic specificity and
social relations). As ludic aspects of culture ‘dances display a changeable picture between conception,
performance and reception they are received in the social life’ (Huizinga 1970: 164). Dances are also
marks of cultural ethnicity and convey multiple meanings and ideologies being a window to the ethnic
groups’ worldviews. It is supposed that rhythmical movements accompanied by music create ecstatic
states of divinities performers’ intensive emotional participation, increase and spread around energies,
protect delimited spaces and link parts of the world such as the earth and sky. In the multiple layers of
dances one can decode different meanings such as concrete (the movement itself), iconic (the properties
of images displayes by personages’ movement and phases of the dance and swing), stylized (the
conventional meaning of getures involved in motion), metonymical and metaphorical (the concepts,
cognitive frames, magic and representational functions encoded in every gesture and movement). In this
intermesh with other indirect means of communication (adornments, attires, costumes, decorations,
jewlery) the dances became vehicles that mediate contact between spaces and have the magic function of
changing the world order.
In this Kazakh cultural context, the national dance called Kamazhay displays a set of rhythmical
movements with specific functions as initiatory strategies of archaical societies where the virgins are
prepared for becoming Vestales. This complexity of motions is sought to connect the spaces through a
crescent development in spiral resembling a flower growth and blossom. While dancing around their
body axes with raised and twisted in a continuously extended volute, the dancers are supposed to link the
earth and the sky and to generate through the spiral created in motion a positive energy that raise the
performers’ soul and is spread among the spectators. Perceived as ritualistic actions in day-to-day life that
acquire sacred sigifications in divinatory and magical practices ‘which stay not in what is told but mainly
in what is performed’ (Robert 1998: 13) they have stereotypical performed actions, contain linguistic
patterns easy to be memorized, semiotic schemas meant to link words and generate a beneficial result.
Defined as ‘action wrapped in symbols’ (Geertz 1973: 29) the dances focus on a communicative role in
connecting two different instances such as people or spaces, and on a performative dimension consisting
of doing something to prepare an individual for a new condition or to perfrom a cosmological function
connecting two spaces or realities, a purpose conveyed by actions, gestures and whispered words
alternating with moments of silence. Strongly anchored in tradition as a line of continuity including
culture, heritage and transcendence, a term derived from two Latin parts: trans- and -dare ‘to give, to
transfer’ (Bloch 2005: 16), the archetypal function of this dance is to demonstrate ‘the power of the
transcendental over everyday life’ (Bloch 1992: 272). Some practices performed in them take place at the
cosmic conjunctions of equinoxes when the spring chases the winter and defeat it. Therefore, the dance is
performed in bordering spaces and liminal times like dawns and sunset, midday and midnight, in the
transitory period during the season. In summary, the main goal of this dance similar to a flight in spiral is
the attempt to reach the highest point of the human spiritual condition and the supreme balance of
wisdom expressed in whispered sounds and significant gestures. In sum, the dance is the sublime
expression of femininity, grace and harmony gathered in the hands’ movement in a flower shape, while
the entire body from toеs to stretched fingers, resemble a bird’s flight into the sky. In effect, Kamazhay is
a female correspondent of a dervish round dance with all necessary preparation for getting into the
inspirational state, evolving and flying into a volute of amazing discoveries. When the same movement is
performed at the same time by around one hundred girls and women belonging to different generations
the suggestions of cosmic connection resonates in the mixture of dance, music and symbols, the most
graceful representations of the community discovering the most suggestive modality of communicating
with the sky and the universe. Changing and sharing the gifts imply in the ritual a “contractual sacrifice”
(Mauss 1966: 15) visible in some moments of the plot - first, the girl’s knee and stay shares her jewelries
with the other maidens in the tribe in a supreme gesture of generosity; second, accepting the gifts
becomes the main step of accepting the proposal; third, the hospitality of nomadic people is revealed in
sharing fermented mare milk with all female and male members of the community . As a subtle expression
of femininity and grace, Kamazhay is a dance performed by females in Kazakhstan while displaying
colorful attires and shoes, richly adorned capes and jewelries and overall the grace of body and hands
movements, which design by fingers circles and flowers supreme expressions of balance, beauty and
perfection. The fingers and the thumbs brought together in the highest point of the body top over the
multi-colored cape converge the entire energy to the height of spirituality and convey the aspiration of the
dancers to reach the sun in a total involvement of body and spirit caught in a flight to absolute.
The attires worn by the female artists are of different colors, richly adorned and have their own
symbolism. Long dresses made of veil of vivid nuances like blue, red, green and yellow cover the
graceful bodies of dancers expressing their attitude through verticality. Generally, the colors of dresses,
capes and shoes have recovered the general symbolic signification of universal cultures but also some
very specific colours like blue are a sign of Kazakh persistence in following the dreams through clear blue
sky or yellow is associated with ‘anguish, movement, endless life and vastness of Kazakhstani plains’
(Sarambetova & Ragiv 2019, 110-111). Their hair is plaited with iron decorations weighing more than
three kilograms and meant to keep the right position of the spine and their forehead oriented to the sun. A
reminiscence from the Turkic ritual of ‘buying the bride’ (Mustafina 2001, 30) is a richly adorned cape
whose name reverberates the sun because the Kazak noun saukele is a compounded word from sau
“sunny”, “beautiful” and kele “head” and denominates female celebration and a piece of wedding
garment worth one hundred horses, rich cattle or even a khan’s yurt. A piece of precious fur goes around
the margins of the cape being the first circle of decorations and distinction on the bottom of this conic
shape. The middle part of the cape is gilded with diamonds and pearls twisted to the top and some
peacock feathers in the highest point. Pointed shoes adorned with beads, pearls and assorted with the
other parts of garments complete the general impression of beauty and grace. Overall, the colors and the
contours of dancers-flowers create the impressive image of a spring garden flourishing and gently
shivering under the wind blowing while the sun is sending over the entire landscape its protective
warming razes.
Celebrations have collected numerous layers of ancient, medieval and modern traditions and became
a source of cultural ethnicity tracking. Nauryz is a celebration of Persian origins (Kenzheakmetuly 2004:
221), which lasts three days around March 22nd, the day of spring equinox, and suggests the universal
symbolism of the spring like renewal, purification, the beginning of a new cosmic year and a balance in
spirit. In the past it lasted nine days, another matter of symbolic numerology, but in the recent times it
was reduced to the number of supreme balance. The ancient character and the complexity of the
celebration is visible in the variety of cultural manifestations spanning from baptizing babies born in this
period; cuisine, dancing, eating and sharing food, fighting; beliefs in giving to abstract symbols such as
birds believed to be flying over the field this time and beneficial spirits whispering good wishes
understood only by chosen people like shepherds. The cultural manifestations are also evident in gender
determination, social stratification as well as role assuming in the big scene of the feast. Sought as a fight
between the cold winter and the warm spring, it found multiple traditional representations like best
wishes, dancing, eating specific food, good human behavior, imitating nomadic knights’ heroic gestures,
welcoming families, friends and other guests - all these meant to reveal the victory of the light over the
dark, to show the best human features like benevolence, hospitality and sincerity. In this context, a
national event of displaying dances, mostly Kamazhay, together with feasts of food sharing, where the
girls and woman act as masters of hospitality, wearing the same costume as during the dance serve
national dishes like beshparmak, a mixture of horse meat, vegetables arranged on a thin foal of bread and
flavored with onion and sauce, happens. When Yurtas settles in the main streets, every house opens their
doors to friends, foreigners and relatives and recreate in a micro the atmosphere of the national
celebration. The oldest woman in the house shares meat among men, children and females in a strictly
defined hierarchy and assume various spiritual ranks. Some soups made of seven ingredients, mainly
some varieties of crops and seeds, meat, milk and sour cream, doughnuts, apples and sweets are served to
the guests - either passersby, friends or relatives. The dances have started being performed and integrated
into this big scene of celebrations and in local tourist branding but the authorities have not become aware
of the importance of this tradition for the development of national tourism and branding the country as a
tourist destination.

4. Conclusions
Ethnicity and identity are at the same time matters of ins and outs, of gaze and inner perception, of
exaggeration or realistic view and criticism. The meanders of both concepts demonstrate they are still
alive as inventions of modernity meant to justify the appearance and the evolution of nations, their
endeavours to recovering the imprecise time of foundation and their role in modern world. Filtering
archetypal traditions through the sieve of religion and assimilating myths in original reinterpretation have
become suggestive modalities of building up a national ideology of identity, in which the sacral
geography, the ancient history, the folklore, the language and Islam represent the main axes. In this multi-
level construction of ethnicity culture and more specifically the dances have started occupying their
territory in the big picture of ethnicity construction. Composed of ‘Turkic and Slavic components’
(Ametbek 2017: 66), Kazakh identity is still being defined after overpassing national crisis.
Despite a high commitment to globalization and modernization manifested by authorities, the
awareness of cultural management has recorded only slight improvements. The strategies defined by
government and the presidency will require granting projects meant for conceptualization and
implementation even on narrow tracks like dances and their role in branding Kazakhstan as a tourist
destination. Timid endeavours have been noticed in the last two decades of independence in stimulating
creative entrepreneurship and private initiatives for the cultural development of tourism. Big investments
in infrastructure and restoring the important part of silk way, supporting projects on sacral geography of
Kazakhstan should be continued together with inclusion in university curricula disciplines as cultural and
art management.
A national dance called Kamazhay has become an important symbol of Kazakh ethnic and large
groups of dancers performing a veritable ritual of welcoming the spring or a guest in a very articulated
scene of beauty, grace, and hospitality. Except for being shown during celebrations in the intimate space
of family and sporadically in tourist tours, it has not yet acquired the great importance it may deserve.
Rediscovering traditions and integrating them in the cultural frame of economic development can help
with enhancing the country’s image and branding it as an original tourist destination. Promoting dances in
these frames of building ethnicity and developing tourism may become a productive modality to raise
people’s participation in supporting civic and ethnic nationalism and to bring further incentives in the
field.
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