Berna Kurt, July 2014
(The
presentation text in the framework of “Features of Folklore: Transgressing Regional Dances” - 8th
Tanznacht Berlin / Salon, 18 July 2014)………
In this presentation, I’ll firstly talk a little about my work as a dancer and researcher. Then I’ll try to focus on some subjects like authenticity, different dance classifications, some examples from the urban dance culture of Istanbul etc.
WHAT DO I DO?
Basically I’m
a researcher and dance writer. I’m the Head of Arts Management
Department at Istanbul Aydın
University. I’m
interested in ethnochoreology and dance anthropology which focus on the cultural
contexts of dances, then dance history, dance criticism, choreography and gender
studies.
I perform mainly the traditional dances
of my country, Turkey.
I’m a member of Bosphorus Performing Arts
Ensemble. Nowadays, I’m working on a choreographic project which mixes up
our traditional dances with body music traditions from different parts of the
world.
I will now put a short
historical framework as the basis of my work.
A Quick Look at the Historical Development of Stage Representations of Folk
Dances in Turkey
Folk dances in Turkey contributed to the construction of a visual national image as in many other countries[1]. Until the 1950s, local dance groups were performing in national celebrations. The ruling party encouraged all kinds of cultural research and dance collection. Thereafter, the local dances had been systematized to be represented on stage. Through nationwide folk dance festivals and later folk dance competitions, a kind of Turkish “national” dance spectrum is constructed.
The post-1950s was a period of multi-party politics, mass immigration into the big cities, industrialization and rapid social change for Turkey. At this time, staged folk dances brought about certain changes in the representational forms. They have been represented with some floor patterns, geometrical shapes. And despite the multicultural diversity they represent, they began to be called as “Turkish folk dances”[2].
Since the 1960s, popularity of folk dances gave way to an increase in the number of folk dance institutions and formation of a very competitive folk dance “market” with an increasing number of folk dance clubs, touristic organizations, festivals and competitions. The state folk dance company and the first folk dance department in a university were respectively initiated in the middle of the 1970’s and 1980’s.
When we come to the 2000’s,
we can observe two dominant approaches in the folk dance scene in
Turkey.
1) Folk dance competition format having some basic criteria as:
-very strict geometrical
patterns
-dancing in unity -
syncronization
-facial expression as generally
smiling!
2) Fire of Anatolia’s “show”
format: (based on the Riverdance of
Ireland)
- a hybrid dance aesthetics –mixing
up many different movement techniques from ballet to acrobatics and contemporary dance,
- stylized steps and costumes,
- high level of syncronization,
-
a very expensive and spectacular use of technology
- a
simple narrative,
Boğaziçi Performing Arts Ensemble (BGST)
Our group exists for twenty years until now.
We already have a short history, that has changed over time with the changes in
Turkish political agenda. In the nineties for example, a time of civil war
between the Kurds and the state, it was a big problem to talk about Kurdish
identity, culture and people in public space. The state simply denied their
existence and defined them as “the Turks from the mountains”. In such a context,
our project called as the “Songs of Fraternity” represented a multi-culturalist
approach in music and dance scene. Many ethnic groups’ songs and dances have
been performed all together…. Turkish, Kurdish, Armenian, Romani, Bulgarian,
Alevi and Jewish… among others…
When Turkey attempted to join in the European Union, the context
changed a bit. Politicians tried to represent a more “democratic” country. Now
the government admits that there is a Kurdish problem in Turkey. There is a
ceasefire between PKK and the Turkish army. Nevertheless with this change in
the official political strategy, we had to discuss and renew our artistic and dramaturgical
strategies too. That’s why we cooperate more and perform with non-professional
dancers and musicians from the disadvantaged communities in Turkey. Sometimes
we can be a hundred people on the stage. Our aim is still to address to some issues in public. Take the Romani people or gypsies for example. Like everywhere, the Romani people in Istanbul are the poorest and most discriminated ones. The authorities don’t want them to stay in the center of Istanbul. In the recent “gentrification” processes, they come up with huge trucks and destroy the Romani settlements. The interesting thing is that people love Romani people when they are on stage because they are great musicians and dancers. We made a dance scene about that: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=379831295405925. We reconstructed an entertainment in the stage where the Romani dancers and musicians were on the focus. Then we begin to show their economic situation in Istanbul, their forced exile etc. We wrote new lyrics and verbalized their problems in poetic manners. This was a little shocking effect for the audience. We tried to produce a feeling of empathy for them.
This dance video is a scene on the forced exile of the Anatolian Greeks
from Turkey: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axLlThQa88k
And this dance video refers to the Gezi Park protests in Istanbul
last year. For us, it was a wonderful process. There, many opposition groups
and individuals against the authoritarian rule of the government came together:
http://vimeo.com/92598066 A counter-nationalist, multiculturalist and pluralist approach is our main position. This plurality can also feature other concerns: since some of our members are part of feminist and / or LGBTİ movements, gender and sexual orientation issues can also be our concerns for the artistic production.
I will now talk a little about my city Istanbul and my
observations of the dance scene there.
ISTANBUL as a “MELTING POT” / HYBRID AESTHETICS of the DANCE SCENE
As a dancer and researcher working in such a metropolis, I’ve always
been interested in the changes of the movement traditions. Those traditions always
get new meanings and new functions.
Meantime, I must refer to Edward Said (1993:
xxix) stating that, “all cultures are
involved in one another; no one is single and pure, all are hybrid,
heterogenous, extraordinarily differentiated and unmonolithic.”[3]
What
is defined as “local” and “authentic” don’t have a fixed content, it’s always subject
to change and modification as a result of the domestication of imported
cultural goods.[4] As Jan Nederveen Pieterse[5]
defines, the globalization is “a process
of hybridization which gives rise to a global mélange.” That process can’t
be reduced to a process of the export of “sameness” or the dominance of a
global American culture. Local and global cultures from all over the world have
been mixing up. On the other hand, cultural hybridity is not without its
relations of power. As Nederveen Pieterse states, “hybridity raises the question of the terms of mixture, the conditions
of mixing and mélange.”[6]
Now I want to refer to a recent phenomenon in
the field of social, popular, folk or ‘participatory’ dancing.[7]
Especially young migrant generations in the big cities mix up many dance genres
and initiate new dancing trends. In social contexts like weddings and
festivals, they mix local dancing styles with acrobatics, break dance and
contemporary dance. Such improvised dances’ short video recordings have been
shared especially in youtube channel and
social media. I can state one example of such popular hybrid dances:
Şemâme
halayı: a fusion of Kurdish traditional group
dances with hip hop and break dance. It has been popularized by young Kurdish immigrants
in urban settlements, especially in weddings and political meetings. Dance is also part of the protest
culture in Turkey. To dance in demonstrations, political protests is very
common. Now a şemâme performance video in a protest: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oi0hb4h-1Jo
And a video example from Berlin most of you
probably know, zeybreak. Kadir “Amigo” Memiş represents a mixture of zeybek
dance tradition from Turkey and break dance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhCernt1ytM
Those recent examples reveal multiple
articulations between dance genres: importing some elements
of break dance, mixing them with local dance traditions, thus ‘domesticating’ and ‘localizing’ them.
And when we talk about the ‘presentational
dance’, we see a similar mixture: some dance traditions being the movement
material of “contemporary” choreographies.
And now, I’ll state one such video example of
presentational choreography: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFj5SWvUTZ0
The “ORIGINS” or the “AUTHENTICITY” ISSUES in (FOLK) DANCE
My PhD thesis was on the politics of folk dance
choreographies in Turkey. I analyzed the discourses and approaches
shaping the folk dance scene in a historical continuum between the national
construction period and the mid 1980’s. One important issue was the discussion
on the “authenticity” of folk dances. Along with increasing
competition in the folk dance market, prominent figures were discusing the
“right” and “wrong” ways of representing folk dances on stage. It was a power
play between them. They tried to draw the borderlines of the intervention on
traditional dance material. Their authenticity claims had
essentialist connotations. Taking for granted the presence of one and only
“essence”, they generally coexisted with the anxiety about the disappearance or
“degeneration” of dances. And such anxiety was generally expressed as the need
to preserve the “national culture”. “Authenticity” has
never been an objective criterion in Turkish context; but reconstructed with
respect to the power play between the folk dancers.
Regina Bendix asserts that the term “authentic” currently stands for the original,
genuine or unaltered.[8] She states that the
American folklorists tested authenticity with lack of identifiable authorship,
multiple existences over time and space, variation of the items, social and
economic circumstances of the “bearers of tradition.”[9] She recalls that nationalism
has been built on the essentialist notions inherent in authenticity and
folklore. Folklore, in the guise of native cultural discovery and rediscovery,
served nationalist movements since the Romantic era.[10] Authenticity has never
been an objective quality; it is always defined in the present.[11] Therefore, she asserts
that the crucial question is not “what is authenticity?” but “who needs
authenticity and why?” and “how has authenticity been used?”[12]
Similarly, the ethnochoreologist Egil Bakka asks: “is the concept ‘authentic’ a weapon in the battle for control over dance material, or is it a neutral standard for measuring certain qualities of dances within a revival context?”[13] He states that local people throughout Norway look at regional dances as a heritage they want to control. They want to define the authentic versions and they want to have the privilege of teaching their dances. He states that, authenticity may very often turn into the question of “whose authenticity?”
After discussing the term “authenticity”, I will lastly try to mention about my position as dance writer questioning the boundaries within the dance discipline.
When
I write about dance performances, I generally focus on the dramaturgical,
political or the historical aspects. I generally look at how people act on
stage, what they try to do aesthetically, how they work, what kind of
relationship they want to have with the audience? For me there is no real
difference between folk dance and contemporary dance when both are
“presentational” genres and both use the same theatrical tools.
In her groung breaking article “An Anthropologist Looks at Ballet as a Form of Ethnic Dance”, dance
antropologist Joann W. Kealiinohomoku, argues
that ballet should be considered as an ethnic dance. She questions the way we
usually use the term ‘ethnic’. The movement in ballet has a strong cultural
connotation which is linked to the history of the European courts. She analyses
the setting of the ballets, for example the flora and fauna you see on stage as
an indication of the Western European upper class life. Every dance has a
context and history. So does ballet, although it was so successfully globalized
in the 20th century. What so we mean when we say “folk”? Why is an African
dance “ethnic” or “folk” and ballet is not? Apart from the orientalist approach it implies, the classification of “ethnic dance” is also problematic because it includes so many different dance cultures and genres. So what is social dance, folk dance, ethnic dance and how they must be classified alternatively?
Arzu Öztürkmen. 2001. "Politics of national dance in Turkey: a historical reappraisal", Adrienne L. Kaeppler (guest editor), Yearbook of Traditional Music 33: 139-144. Los Angeles: International Council for Traditional Music; Department of Ethnomusicology, University of California at Los Angeles.
Egil Bakka. 2002. “Whose dances, whose authenticity?” Laszlo Felföldi,
Theresa Buckland (editors), Authenticity,
whose tradition?: 60-69. Budapest: European Folklore Institute.
John
Storey, “Popular Culture as Global Culture”,
Inventing Popular Culture: From Folklore to Globalization, John Wiley and Sons Ltd, 2003: 107-108: 117.Regina Bendix. 1997. In search of authenticity: the formation of folklore studies. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
- Manidar, BGST Dansçıları ve KeKeÇa Beden Perküsyonu Topluluğu, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axLlThQa88k
- Tevhid/Oneness/Birlik, Şule
Ateş (Choreographer: Bedirhan Dehmen) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFj5SWvUTZ0
[1] Arzu Öztürkmen.
2001. "Politics of national dance in Turkey: a
historical reappraisal", Adrienne L. Kaeppler (guest editor), Yearbook of Traditional Music 33:
139-144. Los Angeles: International Council for Traditional Music; Department
of Ethnomusicology, University of California at Los Angeles: 140.
[3] John
Storey, “Popular Culture as Global Culture”,
Inventing Popular Culture: From Folklore to Globalization, John Wiley and Sons Ltd, 2003: 107-108: 117.
[4]
ibid, 114. (Ang 1996: 155)
[5] ibid, 113. (Pieterse 1995: 45)
[6]
ibid, 117-118. (Pieterse 1995: 57)
[7] Ethnochoreologist Andriy Nahachewsky defines four dance categories:
1) participatory dances (as spontaneous, social dances), in which the dancers’ attention addresses
their interaction with each other,
2) presentational
dances which are pre-prepared and rehearsed for an external human audience,
3) sacred
dances in which the message
is intended for supernatural beings,
4) reflexive
dances in which each dancer focuses
on his/her own kinaesthetic experience.
(See Andriy Nahachewsky, 1995. “Participatory
and Presentational Dance as Ethnochoreological Categories”. Dance Research Journal, 27(1):1-15. New York
[8] Regina Bendix. 1997. In search of authenticity: the formation of
folklore studies. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press: 14.
[11]
ibid, 213.
[12]
ibid, 21.
[13]
Egil Bakka. 2002. “Whose dances, whose authenticity?” Laszlo Felföldi,
Theresa Buckland (editors), Authenticity,
whose tradition?: 60-69. Budapest: European Folklore Institute.
