28 Eylül 2021 Salı

we ♥️ 2 raqs


Dramaturji: Berna Kurt
Kasım 2021


TEAM:

Artistic Director: Tümay Kılınçel

Dance Performance, Co-Choreography: Dina Abdelhafez, The Darvish, Lia Pavlidis, Zadiel Sasmaz, Marilyn Nova White

Musical Direction, Music Production, Singing: Leila Moon

Percussion: Sultan Kara

Kanun: Dima Dawood

Dramaturgy: Berna Kurt

Light Design, Technical Direction: Catalina Fernandez

Light Technique: Raquel Rosildete

 

Costume Design: Kathi Sendfeld

Costume Designer, Fashion Stylist: Merve Çelikyurt

Expert Advisor: Nora Amin

Photo Documentation: Ute Langkafel

Film, Video Documentation: Katharina Seibt

 

Production: Franziska Schmidt, Annina Birrer

 

 

SHOWS:

HAU - HEBBEL AM UFER BERLIN

Wednesday, 24. November 2021, 19:00 Premiere

Thursday, 25. November 2021, 19:00

Friday, 26. November 2021, 19:00

Monday, 27. September 2021, 19:00

 

 

“we  2 raqs” is a choreographic performance group work that deals with the dominant images and techniques of the so-called “belly dance” or “oriental dance”. The dance technique of raqs is used to negotiate and deconstruct orientalist and colonial image structures.

 

After the solo work “Dansöz”, dancer and choreographer Tümay Kılınçel and dramaturg Berna Kurt continue their collaboration on raqs dance, this time working with various perspectives of the dancers.

 

Together with five very different dance performers from the dance genres of so-called classical oriental dance, so-called tribal fusion and american tribal style, fusion, voguing, baladi and contemporary dance, a collective raqs body is to be created. With the impressive and strong performers Dina Abdelhafez, The Darvish, Lia Pavlidis, Zadiel Sasmaz, Marilyn Nova White, the theatre be shaking with a contemporary raqs dance mix.

 

The live band trio plays, sings and drums the music for raqs and other sounds on stage. The trio are: Kanun player Dima Dawood, percussionist Sultan Kara, musical director, music producer and vocalist Leila Moon. In the “we  2 raqs” they come together as a live band trio for the first time.

 

With music, movement and images, the aim is to create an performance that recontextualizes raqs as a feminist, self-empowering practice and celebrates different femme identities on the theatre stage. “we  2 raqs” aims to detoxify the so-called “belly dance” or “oriental dance” and make it visible the “raqs” as an art form by tickling audience minds and setting them in motion.

 

A production Tümay Kılınçel in co-production with HAU – Hebbel am Ufer Berlin,  Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, Forum Freies Theater Düsseldorf and Kaserne Basel.
With the kind support of the Senate Department for Culture and Europe; the Kunststiftung NRW; the NATIONALEN PERFORMANCE NETZ Koproduktionsförderung Tanz,  supported by the Beauftragten der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien; the Ministerium für Kultur und Wissenschaft des Landes NRW; the NRW Landesbüro Freie Darstellende Künste; the Stadt Frankfurt am Main – Dezernat für Kultur und Wissenschaft; the Hessisches Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Kunst; the Kulturamt der Landeshauptstadt Düsseldorf and the Fachausschuss Tanz & Theater BS/BL.

 

25 Eylül 2021 Cumartesi

Belly Dance Education for Women: Reflections on Dance Pedagogy

Berna Kurt, Temmuz 2021 


The revival of interest in belly dance in the 1970s Western second wave feminists ended up in its redefinition as a symbol of personal and sexual liberation (Shay & Sellers-Young, 2003: 17). This dance genre has been correlated with body acceptance, self-esteem, reducing stress as well as encouraging physical fitness, personal growth, and “goddess” ecofeminism’s essentialist notions of “the eternal feminine” and spirituality. Most women experienced dance classes as informal female spaces shielding them from the harsh judgment associated with the male gaze (Moe, 2015: 5, 7).

 

In a very different context, period and place, I have been experiencing a similar learning process in an oriental dance association (namely İstanbul Oryantaller Eğitim ve Kültür Derneği, abbrev. İstorder) in Istanbul/Turkey. In this paper, I will examine my teachers’ ways of passing on knowledge and my personal way of learning the new dance form. Based upon my fieldwork and my previous dance teaching experiences, I will try to explore further possibilities of creating an egalitarian and liberatory environment and a “safe and supportive community” from a feminist dance pedagogical perspective (Barr & Oliver: 106).

 

Keywords: Belly dance, oriental dance, education, transmission, feminist pedagogy



Symposium of ICTM Study Group on Ethnochoreology
18-25.07.2021, Klaipeda/Lithuania 

Dramaturgy of Gender in Dansöz Performance

                                                                                                        Berna Kurt, Nisan 2021



Dansöz solo dance performance is based on its choreographer Tümay Kılınçel’s childhood memory of a female belly dancer in Turkey. Kılınçel, a German citizen born in Germany with Turkish immigrant parents, connects her experiences in Turkey and Western Europe. She aims to develop a feminist resistance against the orientalist, eroticized and exoticized images of the belly dance. 


I have been collaborating with her since three years in some projects on belly dance and I worked as the dramaturg of this dance piece. In this paper, I make a feminist analysis of our common resistance in Dansöz. Adopting a self reflexive approach, I reconsider my subjective experience as well as the the audience feedback. I discuss our feminist tools of resistance on stage in relation with the issues like audience expectations, terminology, identity and movement style.

 

Keywords: Belly dance, dramaturgy, gender, Germany, Turkey


Symposium of ICTM Study Group on Music and Dance in Southeastern Europe 23-25.04.2021

Paper's full text at p. 31: https://trabzon.edu.tr/Share/8F9497889C690626D641BD8591C84B36 




Mobile Dramaturg@Work

                                                                                                        Berna Kurt, Eylül 2020

Dortmund'da düzenlenen Favoriten Festival festivali takip etmem için davetiye gönderir. 
Pandemi nedeniyle birçok kişi gibi ben de gidemem. 
Festival bunun üzerine online dergileri SPACE’te yayımlanmak üzere birşeyler göndermemizi ister. 
Ben de Dansöz gösterisinin prova sürecinde çekilen kişisel fotoğraflar ile kişisel notlarımı bir araya getiririm: