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Posts from the ‘English’ Category

Oct 23

“Occupy [Insert your location here]”: An interview with Inhabitant artists

Interview by Eylül Fidan Akıncı

Photos by Fırat Kuşçu

South African artists Sello Pesa and Vaughn Sadie performed their collaborative work Inhabitant, which focused on the habitation struggles of immigrants in the city of Johannesburg, with a new version designed for Istanbul in the frame of iDANS 05 at Dolapdere. Mirko Winkel, one of the creators of Life and Strive, performed last year centering around gated communities in Istanbul, accompanied the group as facilitator. The performance, featuring artists from Istanbul as well as immigrants from the district, was an interesting example of how a neighborhood can be transformed into a stage. Read more

Oct 21

iDANS Festival: Playing with and in danger – The performance of Inhabitant in Dolapdere, Istanbul

(from labkultur.tv)

Ayşe Draz

The Dolapdere district in Istanbul is infamous for its traffic in rush hour and its inhabitants constituting mainly of lower income and migrant communities as well as thinner addicts and drug dealers. However it might be claimed that the neighborhood has been going through some sort of a gentrification process since Bilgi University, a private Turkish University, has years ago built one of its campuses there and a new grandiose mosque with high technology and neon lights all over, has recently been erected in the neighborhood. Read more

Oct 19

Choreographic Maneouvres

Balancing masterfully some circus tricks, dance and philosophy in his work Allege Clément Layes is one of youngest and brightest stars of this year’s iDANS. The artist presents his work on October 19th at 20:30 at Mimar Sinan Univesity Bomonti Campus Şebnem Selışık Aksan stage.  Appearing as down to earth as much as he is intelligent, Layes responded to Gurur Ertem’s questions.   Read more

Oct 19

Metamorphoses

Marlene Monteiro Freitas presented her solo performance Guintche on October 18th at iDANS. The versatile dancer went through a series of metamorphosis captivating the audience. The artist answered Gurur Ertem’s questions regarding her work.

Gurur Ertem: The persona you create in your work “Guintche”resonates with the image of Josephine Baker – especially with the persona she depicted in Danse Souvage (1927). Read more

Oct 18

A Movement Ritual at Beşiktaş Square

 As part of the public space performance series of the 5th edition of iDANS, two former dancers of Wim Vandekebus’ company Thomas Staeyert and Raul Maia present The Ballet of Sam Hogue and Augustus Benjamin. Claiming Beşiktaş Barbaros Square as their rehearsal space, they invite the public to share the making of their unique movement vocabulary for two consecutive days in a total of six sessions. The artists responded to Gurur Ertem’s questions about their specific movement language which enables bodies to communicate without the use of symbolism.

G.E: In your artistic statement, we read that The Ballet of Sam Hogue and Augustus Benjamin is an ongoing artistic process based on the development of a “non-representational kinetic movement system”. What exactly do you mean by this phrase? Read more

Oct 10

‘WHAT IS AN AUTHOR?’

Ceren Can Aydın

Or what is an artist, a musician, an audience, a critique, an architect?… Well, what is art? How ‘s a work of art  understood, or is it at all understandable?

Ayşe Orhon directs the questions above to all of the components of what we call ‘art’ in her performance, ‘Many’, she exhibited at garajistanbul in 8/9 November 2011. Orhon has set the subject of her dissertation as ‘Permeable Manifestations’ at the Master of Choreography Program in Amsterdam and, as far as I understand, this piece of dance is the fieldwork of her thesis or possibly just a part of it. The artist questions the circumstances she understands, does not understand and she thinks she is not understood, and the people, both from her own and other disciplines, who have more or less become a part of her own history. She questions her very own self in us. Her answer is evident: I am MANY -as many as the signs infused into my body as a dancer, but, at the same time, as many and multi-layered as the questions, answers, images crossing my mind. Read more

Oct 2

An Intellectual Vaudeville With Its Eccentricities: Cheap Lecture and The Cow Piece by Jonathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion

Funda Özokçu

This is a performance about composition in general and where it goes, and perhaps more importantly how it comes about and why, although it doesn’t pretend to answer all or any of these questions.1

It may, however, help to explain why Jonathan Burrows found himself experimenting with words and music after 13 years dancing with the British Royal Ballet, and to know that Matteo Fargion is an Italian composer from London with quite a broad perspective on ways of making music with just about anything you can think of, including 12 model cows. Because this is also a performance about choreography, although probably not in the athletic, tumbling, sprint-around-the-stage-and-nose-dive-for-the-floor sense. Unless the cows get totally beyond the performers’ control of course. And they just might.

Primarily, though, it is a performance about grasping things in a lecture. Here it comes now. Watch closely, the special effects are quite expensive. Read more

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