When Farzaneh Kaboli was the lead dancer of the Iranian National Folk Dance Company, she toured extensively across the U.S., Europe and Asia. After 1979’s Islamic Revolution, she stayed in the country, living under an outright ban on dancing. Once she began performing publicly again a decade and a half later, she danced for mostly female-only audiences at Culture Ministry–approved events, but even this proved controversial: Kaboli was arrested in 2003, along with 24 of her students, when hardline clerics broke up a sanctioned performance. The respected choreographer is finally showing her work in Toronto, marking her first international tour in almost 30 years. Ladies and gentlemen, a study in tenacity.

There was a mass exodus of artists from Iran after 1979, but you remained. Why?
I love both my homeland and dance—I chose to stay in the hope that I might be able to perform here again. Most of my former colleagues have either left or chosen to stop dancing. Among my female contemporaries, I am the only one who is still choreographing, directing and performing.

You stopped dancing for 22 years, but found work in film and TV. How did that happen?
I never gave up dance, but shortly after the revolution I was obliged to take a new approach to present my work. I taught aerobics classes—I’d play Persian music and incorporate Iranian dance movements. And I choreographed actors’ movements for theatre and film.

Wasn’t it risky to teach anything dance related, even if you weren’t publicly performing?
In the beginning, I taught to feel alive. In the movements of my students I saw the continuity of life. I didn’t perceive the risk. The ones who believe dance to be a danger seem to be concerned mostly with the immorality embedded in certain types of dance that were part of the popular entertainment scene in pre-revolutionary Iran.

Your first role in the theatre was in an Arthur Miller play.
Arthur Miller is popular here and his books are translated, published and taught in universities. I didn’t have a major role—I played the part of the wind that blazed onstage and broke a tree apart in All My Sons.

How do you deal with the inherent sensuality of dance in a culture that restricts the representation of such things?
Dance is an art beyond exhibiting the body—a dancer should be able to convey her or his art even within a gunny sack. I do think a beautiful face and well-built body may add to a dance, though.—with translation by Ida Meftahi

Farzaneh Kaboli’s piece This Dance I Wish…(Raqsi Chunin) is performed by the Vashton Dance Company Aug. 8 to 10. $25–$40. Isabel Bader Theatre, 91 Charles St. W., 416-978-8849.