Skip to content

Posts from the ‘Yazılar / Texts’ Category

Oct 19

Failing the invisible theatre

Iulia Popovici

Istanbul Sapphire is a residential building in the heart of the city’s business area. A block of flats. It’s high – “the highest residential building in Turkey and in the whole Europe” (it has 54 floors), covered in glass, remarkably ugly and equally expensive. It’s a future gated community, where the owners will have exclusive access. Only potential buyers are allowed inside, to visit some of the common areas, the furnished model apartment on the 33rd floor and the terrace on the top of the building. So two artists – Anat Eisenberg and Mirko Winkel, both living and working mainly in Germany – decided that the audience to their newest project, Live and Strive, should assume the role of potential buyers in order to have access to Istanbul Sapphire – and a number of other upper class residential projects, as a matter of fact.

The real-estate agent doesn’t know who these seven (eight?) people are. We know the situation is not genuine, we know we are performing roles. It could be the ideal condition for a performance of invisible theatre (a form of socially-engaged theatre developed by the late Augusto Boal, meant to emulate reality in order to raise consciousness towards social inequities) except for the fact that the participants are not professional actors, there is no script and no consciousness involved. (But yes, there was a moral/ ethical issue: why misleading the otherwise honest real-estate agent? Just to expose the secret life of rich people?) Even if the potential of the theme is quite generous: living in a building like Istanbul Sapphire resembles to waking up, every day, in a jar (a 1.2 to 7.3 million dollars per apartment jar), with the perspective of never leaving it, going in your slippers 30 floors downstairs in order to spend your evening in front of a TV with other several bored nouveaux riches and socializing with the guy bringing you the food ordered from the restaurant some other 30 floors below. The newest technology and a pointless existence – in his movies, Jacques Tati described it better than anyone else.

If the text you’ve just read looks more like a society column in a more or less socialist-liberal newspaper, it’s because the Live and Strive experience of the author herself was least of all a performative one. But maybe ethical challenges are part of everybody’s personal dramaturgy of the self.

Oct 10

Fabian Barba – A Mary Wigman Dance Evening

Lise Smith

A silver-clad figure struts across the stage, hands akimbo, to the sound of Chinese gongs. Ecuadorian dance artist Fabian Barba is performing an evening of solos by Mary Wigman based on her first tour of the United States, and the effect is uncanny – Barba inhabits not only Wigman’s choreography but her costumes, her delicate hand gestures, and her somewhat mannered facial expressions.

The performance comments on the enactment of a feminine persona on stage, but Barba resists the urge to camp it up. Dressed in female costume (but not in drag – he has shaved neither leg nor torso hair and wears no makeup) Barba enacts the graceful hip shifts and wrist flicks of Wigman’s short solos, effectively becoming the choreographer herself for the duration of the performance. The material is shown cabaret-style, with a costume change and a musical intermission between each piece, immersing the audience in the chandelier-lit 1930s ambience of the setting.

The movement palette is minimal; Wigman/Barba favours simple stepping patterns up and down the stage, shaping the space with liquid arms and hand flourishes that often appear oriental or tribal. One striking sequence,Sturmlied, features the performer in a diaphanous red cape covering the face, whirling the fabric through the air like dust in a sandstorm. FinaleDrehmonotonie finds Barba circling incessantly about the centre, pacing the stage like a caged beast in a silver ballgown.

Special mention must go to Sarah-Christine Reuleke for her loving recreations of Wigman’s costumes, a procession of backless silk gowns, Egyptian-inspired wraps and elegant shawls that are as fascinating to watch as the choreography itself.

Strange and oddly-mannered at first, the Wigman style has by the end of the performance become familiar, the final encore welcome. Just as Barba takes on the persona of Wigman in his enactment of her choreography, so we in the audience, gradually warming towards this unaccustomed style, become identified with her earlier audiences. This thoughtful, multi-layered recreation reveals the performance as not mere historical artefact but as a constant and living process refracted through both audience and performer.

Posted by LiseS

Nov 11

Dokuman’ın Dökümü

Yarattığı ambians açısından sürekli kurulması gereken antika bir saatle Atari neslinden kalan düşük teknolojili bir oyun arasında gidip gelen Dokuman, formların işlevler tarafından belirlendiği modüler sahne yapısında ve oluşturduğu geçişken evrenlerde araç ve araçsallığı yeniden tanımlıyor.

Mustafa Kaplan ve Filiz Sızanlı (Taldans) yönetiminde yoğun bir işbirliği süreciyle yaratılan Dokuman, görünen ve hayal edilene; işlevsel ve işletimsel olana; ses ve söze dair birbirlerine kolaylıkla dönüşebilen örüntüler sunuyor. Dikiş izlerini sözde belli etmeyen bir sistemde oluşan delik, çatlak ve benzeri defolardan nereye akılacağına dair flörtöz bir beklentiyi davet ediyor; zaman içerisinde bir yırtık olarak beliriyor… Read more

Oct 30

Koreografiyi Seslendirmek

İzleyicinin, yine Bimeras’ın düzenlediği ve iDANS Festivali’nin açılışı niteliğindeki İstanbulREconnects (2006) programından Lili Handel adlı radikal solo performansıyla hatırlayacağı Bulgar sanatçı Ivo Dimchev, bu yapıtıyla yılın en iyi performansı dalında 2008’de Fransa Eleştirmenleri Ödülü’nü almıştı. Sanatçı iDANS’a bu kez farklı bir fiziksel/vokal doğaçlama performansıyla katılıyor.

Müzisyen çalışma arkadaşı Emilian Gatzov eşliğinde Dimchev, kuşkusuz olağanüstü bir fiziksel çaba ve yetenek gerektiren doğaçlama konser/performansı Concerto’da, sesiyle ve bedeniyle duygulanımların mevcut bütün uçlarında gezinerek, ne tam olarak gülerek ne de ağlayarak, ama hep arada bir yerde kalmayı kotararak karşımıza çıkıyor. Dimchev’in büyülediği izleyici adeta “Ivo, sen kaç kişi birdensin?” diye sormak istiyor…

Sanatçı sanatsal rotası, yapıtlarında ele aldığı sorular ve koreografi anlayışı üzerine soruları yanıtladı. Read more

Oct 30

Voicing Choreography

The public will remember the Bulgarian artist Ivo Dimchev who presented his radical solo Lili Handel as part of IstanbulREconnects Program organized in 2006 by Bimeras. Dimchev, who is the recipient of French Critics Best Performance of the Year Award in 2008 with Lili Handel, returns to iDANS with another powerful physical/vocal performance.In the improvised concert/performance Concerto which undoubtedly requires extraordinary physical dexterity and virtuosity, Ivo Dimchev’s voice subtly travels between the extremes of affects, yet neither laughing nor crying, always remaining in a poetic liminality crafted by the artist and his musical collaborator Emilian Gatzov. Dimchev captivates the audience who feels prompted to ask, “Ivo, how many bodies can you embody?”For more information about the artist you can visit http://www.ivodimchev.com

Read more

Oct 27

Gustavia

Gurur Ertem & Noémie Solomon

İki ses ve iki beden aracılığıyla anlatılan Gustavia adındaki bu gizemli kadın kim? Gülüyor mu ağlıyor mu? Yoksa kadınlık, ölüm, tiyatro, sanat ve sanatçının toplumdaki konumu gibi çok ciddi konuları alaya mı alıyor? Gustavia farklı sanatsal mecralardan gelen fakat performans sanatının geleceğine dair ortak kaygılar güden iki olağanüstü sanatçıyı biraraya getiriyor.

Mathilde Monnier ve La Ribot’un ortak yapıtı olan bu performans, klasik burleskin birtakım kod ve tekniklerinden faydalanıyor: Burleskin sinemada (Peter Sellers, Tati, Marx Kardeşler, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Nanni Moretti), tiyatro, performans sanatı (Leo Bassi, Anna ve Bernard Blume) ve plastik sanatlardaki (Bruce Nauman…) birtakım unsurlarını bir çeşit “beden burleskine” dönüştürerek dansta gizli olan komik unsuru ortaya çıkarmayı hedefliyorlar.

Noémie Solomon Mathilde Monnier ile Bimeras Kültür Vakfı’nın düzenlediği iDANS kapsamında 27/28 Ekim 2009 tarihinde sahnelenecek Gustavia adlı performans üzerine söyleşti.

Oct 27

Gustavia

Interview by Noémie Solomon

Who is this mysterious woman called Gustavia? Is she laughing or crying? Or is she just being cynical on inexhaustible topics such as womanhood, death, theater, the arts and the artist’s position in society? Gustavia brings together two extraordinary choreographers of different artistic trajectories who share similar concerns regarding the future of performance art.It is a performance that draws on traditional burlesque by appropriating inventively some of its characteristic codes and techniques. Elements of burlesque which run through film (Peter Sellers, Tati, Marx Brothers, Keaton, Chaplin, Nanni Moretti…), theater, performance art (Leo Bassi, Anna and Bernard Blume…) as well as the visual arts (Bruce Nauman…), are transformed into a kind of “body-burlesque” which is rooted in squandered energy, repetition and accident. While humor is conspicuous in burlesque it is hidden in dance, and this is precisely what the two choreographers aim to extract.Gustavia will be performed on 27/28.10.2009 at iDANS International Festival of Contemporary Dance and Performance organized by Bimeras Cultural Foundation. Noémie  Solomon interviewed Mathilde Monnier about Gustavia and her collaboration with La Ribot.

Read more

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »