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Posts from the ‘English’ Category

Oct 2

Cheap Lecture and the Cow Piece

Rümeysa Kiger

Even though Jonathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion confess from the very beginning of “Cheap Lecture” that they don’t know what they are doing, and that whatever they are doing is stolen from John Cage’s writing style in “Lecture on Nothing,” they beautifully direct the audience from obscurity to illumination, not just by spoken word but also with their relaxed approach.

Two performers stand in front of microphones and read a text rhythmically and let the pages fall to the ground one by one, while some parts of the text also appear on a white screen in the background. When the calm and warm attitude of the performers meets with their sometimes deeply philosophical and other times absurd movements and suggestions, the viewer has to choose between either trying to catch every element that could possibly be important or relaxing and letting the show flow. Read more

Sep 25

iDANS 05: “At Work”

iDANS 05: “At Work”

(30 September-23 October 2011)

 The 5th edition of the iDANS Festival will encompass diverse expressions of contemporary art, dance, theatre, music, performance art –emphasizing their commonalities in respect to performativity and corporeality– and will take place at multiple venues in Istanbul between September 30th and October 23rd 2011. The event will continue in the next season in Berlin with a special international program entitled “biDANS: Guest Works in Berlin”.

Organized and presented by Bimeras each year around a curatorial theme, the conceptual framework of the 2011 edition of iDANS is determined as “At Work”. The program will feature discussions, staged performances, public space interventions and workshops as well as informal meetings in order to interrogate, to what extent each step in realizing a contemporary performing arts work can be considered as “work”; how the notion of “immaterial labour” as the predominant mode of production in current economies is reflected in the conception, implementation and organization of artistic processes; and how artistic labour contributes to and transforms creativity-centred economic and symbolic production.

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Jan 18

But then again…idealism

Nóra Bükki Gálla

Five dancers, three nations, one artistic principle: diversity. The Spanish-Italian-Hungarian group won a 2 week residency with the 2010 Prix Jardin d’Europe in Istanbul; this January City is part of the DunaPart festival program in Budapest, Hungary.

One has to be bold enough to tackle the issues of social conflicts and interpersonal problems–small and large scale–on a dance stage. It’s a road that may lead nowhere in particular, especially if the artists are hard core romantics; one hardly dares to look for fear of seeing a complete disaster. So we hold our breath and after 50 minutes, relax. Idealism is not dead yet. Read more

Nov 1

European Dance Prize for Young Choreographers awarded within iDANS Festival

The “Prix Jardin d’Europe” goes in 2010 to a performance that questions the contemporary value of art

On October 31st, iDANS Festival hosted on its closing evening the awarding of the European Dance Prize for Young Choreographers. The “Prix Jardin d’Europe” is the main project of the “Jardin d’Europe”, a network supported by the Culture Programme of the European Commission, developed by its 10 European partners.

In 2010, the jury consisted of the emerging dance critics and journalists, participants to the 3rd edition of Critical Endeavour, which is an educational writing workshop programme within Jardin d’Europe: Eylül Akıncı (TR), Bükki Nóra Ildikó (HU), Iulia Popovici (RO), Julie Rodeyns (BE), Lisa Caroline Smith (UK), Theresa Steininger (AT), Josefine Wikström (SE), Maxime Fleuriot (FR), Martina Rösler (AT) ,and Dean Damjanovski (MK).

After the deliberations of the ten members of the jury, the “Prix Jardin d’Europe” is awarded to the performance E.I.O. by Maria Baroncea, Eduard Gabia & Dragana Bulut. The value of the award is 10.000 euro in concepts of production funding for a new creation.

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Oct 31

Also to be discussed – presentations of Sanja Mitrovic and Gabriele Reuter

Iulia Popovici

Once upon a time there was a happy country called Yugoslavia. Really, it was happy, not because even the trees joyfully spelled the name of the leader Tito but because people were happy, even those pictured on the 100 dinars bill. Then the country stopped being happy – until its citizens (fewer now, since the country had become smaller) gathered again on the bridges of the capital, to save it from bombing. In Will you ever be happy again?, the Serbian-born artist Sanja Mitrovic and the German Jochen Stechmann star a performance about how the international perception of national identity marks the personal construction of the self, putting in a mirror their own experiences. The result is ironic without being bluntly critical and touching without being sentimental – equilibrium very difficult to reach when talking about the innocent bystanders of recent past. Read more

Oct 31

Thought Works

Nóra Bükki Gálla

The architect’s eye looks for the mechanism that makes things work, the structure behind the form. In a performance that connects theory and abstraction with the reality of the stage, Filiz Sizanli attempts to show us how the conventional usage of stage space can be challenged, while playing with the interchangeability of dimensions. Drawing a parallel between dynamism and stability, science and art, we find new ways to explore, analyze and describe motion.

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Oct 31

Beyond the Box

Nóra Bükki Gálla

Yesterday could the Istanbulies watch and participate in the 24-hour durational performance Beyond the Box performed and created by Javier Murugarren, Erikk McKenzie, Velvet lee black and Belit Sağ. As the title reveals is Beyond the Box a transdisciplinary attempt in which street theatre, burlesque and cabaret meet improvisation and dance. Dressed in dotted and striped colourful clothes, with a DJ-set from which tones of both salsa and applauds came out, two bags filled with inflatable balls, funny hats and other props does the performance engage its audience in a compelling and generous way. Beyond the Box takes its spectators beyond normative ideas about both art, performance and themselves.
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