The halay is not optional. At every Kurdish wedding, every Newroz celebration, every family gathering large enough to push the furniture back, the halay forms. It is a chain dance — men and women holding hands or each other’s shoulders, moving together in a pattern of steps that varies slightly by region but is universally recognizable as Kurdish. The chain is democratic: it includes grandmothers and teenagers and children being pulled along by their parents, all moving to the same rhythm.

The social function of the halay is not incidental to its cultural significance — it is the point. The dance enacts community. You cannot do it alone. It requires you to be physically connected to other people and to move with them, adjusting your steps to the group rather than performing for an audience. The best halay dancers are not the flashiest ones; they are the ones who make the chain move together most smoothly.

In the diaspora, the halay has proven remarkably durable. Kurdish Americans who grew up in Nashville or San Diego and have never danced in Kurdistan still know the steps, taught by parents or picked up at community events. When the music starts and the chain forms, people who moments earlier were strangers find themselves connected. That is not nothing. That is, in fact, quite a lot.