Skip to content

Posts from the ‘Yazılar / Texts’ Category

Oct 25

Uzak…: Tarihsel Tanıklıklardan Örülen bir “Otoportre” / Loin…: An auto-portrait Woven with Testimonies

Rachid Ouramdane, Noémie Solomon ile söyleşti

N.S: Bu koreografik proje Vietnam ve Kamboçya’ya yaptığınız yolculuklarla şekillendi ve dramaturjisi Cezayir, Fransa ve Viyetnam gibi ülkelere yayılıyor. Bu eseri Avrupa’nın sınırlarında yer alan İstanbul’da sahnelemenin anlamı nedir sizin için? Bu yapıt, üzerine kurulduğu kültürler ve bölgeleri nasıl yansıtıyor?

R.O: Son dönemlerde “bir ‘yabancı’ olarak kendimizi nasıl inşa ediyoruz” sorusuyla ilgilenmeye başladım. Kendi seçimlerinden dolayı, ya da mecbur kaldıkları için, ya da ailelerinden devraldıkları için sürgünde yaşayan insanlara odaklandım. Kimliklerini kültürel bir karışım üzerinden inşa eden insanlarla mülakatlar gerçekleştirerek dünya üzerinde sınırlar çizen politikaları sorgulamak istedim. Read more

Oct 25

Loin…: An auto-portrait Woven with Testimonies

Noémie Solomon interviews Rachid Ouramdane

French artist Rachid Ouramdane’s solo which will be presented on October 24th connects all three themes of iDANS Festivals so far. Loin…(Far…) is a multi-media performance which explores the conflicts between identity and experience of foreignness, tracing a series of autobiographic, poetic and choreographic journeys through Algeria, Cambodia and Vietnam; and through his father’s diaries during his military service in Indochina. It is a performance which exposes the continuity of emotions across the figures of the colonizer and the colonized as ambiguous positions in an endless game of mirrors.Noémie Solomon interviewed the artist about the choreographic journey of and the stakes involved in Loin…

Read more

Oct 22

Süreksizliğin Dansı / Dancing Discontinuity

Naoto Moriyama

(22.10.2009 Taraf Gazetesi’nden alınmıştır)

Japonyalı koreograf Zan Yamashita, Avrupa’da ikinci kez ve Türkiye’de ilk kez sahne alıyor. Sanatçının It is written there adlı performansı iDANS kapsamında 21 ve 22 Ekim’de sunuluyor.

Kyoto’da yaşayan Japon dansçı ve koreograf Zan Yamashita, hareket eden bedenlerden çok “süreksizlik estetiği” ile ilgilenir. Bazı çağdaşlarından farklı olarak dili performansın sürekliliğini kesintiye uğratmak adına kullanır ve seyirciye, dans ve dilin farklı renk ve şekillerde buluşması için deneysel bir alan yaratır.

1970’de Osaka’da doğan Yamashita dans kariyerine 1989’da başladı. 1980’lerin sonlarıyla 1990’ların başında Japonya’da dans alanında kuşaksal bir dönüşüm yaşandı; meşale, Butoh neslinden haleflerine geçti. Japon avangard dansının en önemli kurucusu Tatsumi Hijikata 1980’lerin ortalarında yaşama veda etti. Aynı yıl dansçı/koreograf Saburo Teshigawara, Bagnolet Uluslararası Dans Yarışması’nda ikinci oldu. Butoh kabul gören bir janr oldu ve daha genç nesilden çeşitli dansçılar farklı tarzlarla deneyler gerçekleştirdi. Kendi bağımsız tarzını geliştiren Zan Yamashita, 1990’ların ortalarında şiiri dansa tanıttı. Yamashita, dans eleştirmeni Naoko Kogo ile bir söyleşisinde şöyle ifade etmiştir: “Kariyerime başladığımda karışık-medya tiyatral tarzıyla Dumb Type ilgi odağıydı. Belki biraz aksi biriydim; ama aklımda şiir okuma fikri belirmişti.” Read more

Oct 22

La Ribot – Laughing Hole

Interview by Noémie Solomon

In the throes of an eccentric laughter often indistinguishable with crying, the artists physically and symbolically carry the burden of the words they gradually reveal. Commands, headlines, sound-bites, slogans and confessions overlap and involve us in a game of shifting meanings in eclectic forms. Are we in a detention camp? Or are we part of a political demonstration? Or is this a battlefield?

In this intense performance, La Ribot merges the meanings fixed in images and words with those created by the position of the spectators. This work demonstrates how the terms “performance” and “exhibition” once marking the boundary between dance and visual arts have now in fact merged in performative art practice. The audience is free to come and go at any point throughout this project which lasts between 4-6 hours, participating in the making of temporary images and meanings as the performance unfolds.

A dancer by training, choreographer and visual artist, Maria Ribot has contributed to the development of contemporary dance in Spain since the mid-80s. In 1991, under the name of La Ribot, she took her work along new paths by creating scenic works at the moving intersection of live art, performance and video. Humor and eccentricity are the distinctive features of her work, which covers a broad artistic field. Noémie Solomon interviews the artist about her collaboration with Mathilde Monnier in Gustavia and her durational performance installation Laughing Hole.

N.S: In the current edition of the iDANS festival, you are performing Gustavia, a piece created with Mathilde Monnier, and Laughing Hole. Can you say a few words about the differences and similarities of both projects?

L.R: Both works Gustavia and Laughing Hole are really strong in terms of representation, with completely different dispositive. Gustavia is more theatrical and Laughing Hole closer to performance art, but even if Laughing Hole sounds very real, we are playing a role of “real laugh,” in a similar way that in Gustavia where we are acting a role. Both works are apparently opposites, but they are not that much different. Black in Gustavia, white and colors in Laughing Hole.

By its specific form, content and duration, Laughing Hole could be located between visual art and performance art, like most of your work, in a highly innovative and thoughtful fashion. Why choose to operate at the intersections of these art forms? What do you think in your work functions best when located at these frontiers; what are the risks or vulnerabilities of such locations?

I don’t always choose to operate in one place or another, it depends where I can work and in which context. Or what idea I have or who is asking me what. If I have to do a piece for Art-unlimited, at the Basel Art Fair, which was the case forLaughing Hole, I cannot think in the same way as when I am working with Mathilde Monnier in a theatre… I have the capacity to understand different contexts or disciplines and I work with this vision. I am not interdisciplinary: I am just versatile. The risk is to be distracted, that is why I try to investigate along the same line.

Throughout the piece, laughing comes to destabilize, intensify and reorganize usual meanings, or our general understanding of language. Could you say a few words about your own practice of laughing? Would you describe it as a physical, emotional, critical act? How do you choreograph such an extreme, durational and intense gesture?

There is an important amount of will power; we have to believe that it is possible and we get deeply into. We use all techniques that we know: theatrical techniques, dance techniques, yoga techniques, breathing techniques, concentration techniques and a lot of mental power, along with a strong sense of humor. Because it not a funny piece, just sometimes; it is a hard and quite disturbing piece, extremely emotional and difficult technically.
(18.09.09)

La Ribot/Laughing Hole
29.10.09
garajistanbul 16:00-20:00

Oct 22

Dancing Discontinuity

Dancing Discontinuity

Naoto Moriyama

The work of Zan Yamashita, a Japanese dancer/choreographer based in Kyoto, avoids the harmony of beautiful moving bodies in favour of an art of discontinuity. Unlike his contemporaries, Yamashita uses language as a primary element to disrupt the continuity of performance and lead his audience into an experimental space where language and dance are allowed to combine in fresh, colourful ways.

Yamashita was born in Osaka in 1970 and began his dance career in 1989. The late 1980s and early 1990s were a time of generational transition in Japanese dance, when the torch passed from the Butoh generation to their successors. Tatsumi Hijikata, the most important founder of Japanese avant-garde dance, passed away in the middle of 1980s, and Saburo Teshigawara won second place in the Bagnolet International competition for choreographers in the same year. As Butoh had become an accepted genre, a number of dancers from the younger generation experimented with many different styles. Zan Yamashita was able to develop his own independent style, which included the introduction of poetry into his choreography in the mid 1990s. In an interview with a dance critic Naoko Kogo, Yamashita says, “When I started my career, Dumb Type held the spotlight with the mixed-media theatrical style. Perhaps I was perverse, and an idea of reading poems flashed before my mind”. The original version of It is written there was first performed in 2002.

Read more

Oct 11

Romeo ve Juliet’in Hikayesini Anlatabilir Misiniz? / Can You Tell the Story of Romeo and Juliet?

Gurur Ertem

(11.10.09’da Radikal İki’de kısaltılmış olarak yayımlanan söyleşinin orjinali).

10-31 Ekim 2009 tarihlerinde gerçekleşecek iDANS Uluslararası Çağdaş Dans ve Performans Festivali’nin üçüncüsü New Yorklu avangard tiyatro topluluğu Nature Theater of Oklahoma’nın sahneleyeceği Romeo ve Juliet ile start alıyor.

Nature Theater of Oklahoma, eşi bulunmaz bir espri anlayışı ve zekâyla yeniden yorumladıkları Romeo ve Juliet ile, iDANS’ın zamansallığı sorgulayan bir önceki etkinlikler serisinden bizi alıp festival bünyesinde bu kez incelenen “Gülmek ↔ Ağlamak” temasına getiriyor.

İsimlerini Franz Kafka’nın Amerika adlı romanından alan Nature Theater of Oklahoma (NTO), Pavol Liska ve Kelly Copper yönetimindeki New York bazlı bir performans topluluğu. Prestijli Off-Broadway Tiyatro Ödülü OBIE’nin sahibi olan NTO, birlikte yarattıkları ilk dans yapıtları Poetics: a ballet brut’den bu yana, “nasıl yapacaklarını bir türlü bilemedikleri” tür eserler üretmeye ve kendilerini imkânsız durumlara sürüklemeye odaklanmıştır. Mekânda bulunan herkesin tüm varlığını ve angajmanını talep eden, tedirgin edici durumlar yaratmaya çalıştıklarını ifade eden NTO, eserlerinde keşfedilmiş bir yer, kulak misafiri olunmuş bir sohbet, gözlemlenmiş bir jest gibi mevcut materyalleri biçimsel bir manipülaysona uğratıp gündelik gerçekliğin algısını dönüştürmeyi ve bunu tiyatronun da ötesine taşımayı hedefliyor.

Klasik bir aşk öyküsünü dinamik ve özgün bir metin anlayışıyla yeniden ele alan/yeniden icat eden Nature Theater of Oklahoma bize tiyatronun tiyatrosunu, yorumun yorumunu ve anlamlandırma çabasının anlamlı çabasını, hayatın, aşkın ve benliğin anlatısal inşasını ortaya koyarak sunuyor. Eser aynı zamanda, hafızanın karanlık koridorlarını aydınlatmadaki yaratıcı çabayı gözler önüne seriyor.

Topluluğun yönetmenlerinden Kelly Copper, çalışma süreçlerine ve New Yorkt’tan çıkan en ilginç avangard tiyatro topluluklarından biri haline gelmelerinin serüvenine dair sorularımı cevapladı. Read more

Oct 11

Can You Tell the Story of Romeo and Juliet?

Can You Tell the Story of Romeo and Juliet?

Gurur Ertem interviews Kelly Copper of Nature Theater of Oklahoma.

With their humorous reinvention of Romeo and Juliet, The New York based theater troupe Nature Theater of Oklahoma picks up from the last edition of iDANS which explored temporality in the arts, and brings us to the festival’s current focus. The work will be performed on October 10th and 11th atIstanbul State Theater’s Tekel Stage in Uskudar at 20:30.

In this delightful remake/retake of a classic on love which reintroduces theater an imaginative and dynamic concept of text, Nature Theater of Oklahoma displays a theater of theatrics, an interpretation of an interpretation, inquiring into the narrative construction of life, love, and the self as well as exposing the creativity involved in lightening up the blind alleys of memory.

Kelly Copper, who directs the company with her partner Pavol Liska, answers my questions concerning the trajectory of their career and their art.

Read more

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »