The light is off in the room. It is evening but not dark yet. Through the half-open door typical English old men in dark breeches can be seen bowling, with expectant smiles.

Inside the room the dancers have gathered. They all are English women.

Chrisandra puts the CD into the player. It is "Msho Aghchik" ("A girl from Mush"), performed by an American Armenian singer. The quality of both the CD and the performance is quite bad, but it does not matter. A warm wave of longing tightens my throat as I hear Armenian sounds in the small English town of Nottingham where the question "Armenia is the capital of which country?" is so common.

Chrisandra demonstrates the first steps and we begin to dance-dances which in Armenia I used to see so often on the TV screen would change the channel immediately, under the strong influence of Latin American culture.

The movements are very easy for me, which I cannot say about the rest of the dancers. The English students lose the rythm, stumble, laugh at their mistakes and carry on with mastering the movements of an Armenian dance.

"Very difficult," a woman says breathing heavily, when we are having a little rest from the ceaseless rotations, claps, and curtseys. This woman travels here from a neighbouring city every week, just for the dance lesson.

"The tension is very great," she goes on. "You have to pay ateention to for all your body's movements, even your fingers."

Chrisandra plays a CD with a piece from the opera "Anush". The dance is lively and brings smiles to everybody's face. As soon as the dance comes to an end, they all ask me to tell them the plot of the opera. Their enthusiasm for Armenian culture comes as a pleasant surprise; being interested in foreign cultures is not common to the English at all.

I tell the story of Anush. Everybody is struck by the tragedy of the story.

"But we were dancing so happily!" one of them exclaims.

Suddenly we noticed some black children gathered at the door and watching us attentively.

Chrisandra gave them a sign to join us, and now the English kids with black curls and shining eyes are dancing Armenian dance. Funny and moving at the same time.

At the end of the class Chrisandra turnes off the lights and puts a glass vessel with floating daisies and candles in the center of the dancing hall. A deep, mild mild soprano comes out of the recorder.

"The dance we are going to do now is dedicated to the memory of the Armenian Genocide," says Chrisandra. "To the memory of the 1.5 million innocent people who were moved from their homeland and murdered by the Turks in 1915."

Chrisandra is talking about the massacres. Her voice is solemn and sad. She seems to be an Armenian telling of her ancestors' sufferings. The dancers are standing in the circle and listening to her in silence.

"Nevertheless this is not only a dance of suffering," Chrisandra concludes. "There is also triumph of life and victory in it. Victory of those Armenians who survived, victory of the eternally alive Armenian spirit."

We made a circle, held each other's little fingers. Sixteen steps to the right, the hands portraying the symbol of eternity. We are spinning round slowly with candles in lace candle-holders in our hands.

At the end of the dance we blow out the candles and narrow the circle around the vessel. The circle symbolizes the digit 1, unity, which the English dance teacher regards as one of the most distinguishing qualities of the Armenian nation.

After the class Chrisandra collects the CDs. We talk about the path that led her to Armenian dance.

"I have loved dancing since childhood," she says. "Every Christmas at school we had a dance competition and every year I won it. But we lived in the countryside and there was no opportunity to find dance classes.

"I was twenty when I moved to the city. I went to every dance class that I could find. One day I went to a class in circle dances from different countries. I loved them at once. I started to learn them.

"Time passed; I moved to Nottingham and began to teach myself.

"I first came across Armenian dances in the early 1990s when I danced with Laura Shannon, an American circle dance teacher, who taught Armenian dances as well. Then I met Tineke van Geel, a Dutch dance teacher who had visited Armenia throughout the 80s and 90s to learn Armenian dances. She had also recorded several CDs with Armenian musicians.

"In the mid-90s I met Shakeh, from whom I learnt much from about Armenian dances.

I particularly like the women's Armenian dances; I love the graceful arm movements and the music. I liked the dances because of their complexity and because they were so different from the dancing that I usually did, which tended to concentrate just on feet and not the rest of the body. Armenian dances involved the whole body, head, eyes, etc. Also there was something about the music and the dances that stirred a deep connection with me which is hard to describe. Even the words seemed dear to me although I did not understand their meaning.

"I discovered similar feelings in many people who attended my dancing classes.

"I was at a dance workshop with Shakeh in London where we learnt a dance that she told us was often danced at weddings. In the next room there was a lot of noise and people and somehow the two groups got mixed up during a tea break. The other group was a wedding group - an English woman marrying a Scottish man. So all the men were wearing Scottish kilts. We invited them into the dance workshop and the bride and groom stood in the centre whilst the dance group and the wedding guests danced the Armenian dance around them."

Chrisandra told me that her dream of visiting Armenia would finally come true this spring.

"I am going to learn new dances, get CDs and even the Armenian taraz if possible. Also to see with my own eyes many things I have just read about.

"A s a result of learning the dances I began to become interested in Armenia and finding out more about it as a country. I found out about the Diaspora and the Turkish massacre. Some people translated the Armenian songs for me. One of the aspects of some songs which I strongly identify with is the longing for homeland and the importance of the land of your heritage and where you come from. I can understand that from my own experience of being brought up on the land and in close contact with the earth.

"I find the history of Armenia very poignant. Some of the dances, like Gorani, seem to express the trauma of Armenians. I admire the strength of this nation that had to pass through so many troubles but survived. "