YOUNG TURKISH CHOREOGRAPHERS BETWEEN SELFORGANISATION AND AUTHORITARIAN RULE Charlotte De Somviele 18-06-2015 'Your absurd is our reality' At the request of 0090, the international art platform for strengthening cooperation between Turkish and European artists, choreographer Marc Vanrunxt presented a workshop in Istanbul. His oeuvre, which spans more than thirty years, formed the basis for a meeting with the local dance scene. Charlotte De Somviele travelled along and, against the background of a city in political transition, searched for links between Vanrunxt’s ‘art of choreography’and the desire of young artists to professionalise. Istanbul. A city where taxi drivers manoeuvre through mountainous streets, relying on the know-how of fellow citizens rather than a GPS. A city where street musicians, minarets and church bells define the soundtrack of the city, and the strength of the tea is proportional to the passion in the hearts of its 16 million inhabitants. A city where the chaos is so well organised that it feels almost natural. But also the city where the beaten down protests at Taksim Square last year still burn on the lips of the citizens, where leftist slogans adorn the walls of the Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, where books of John Steinbeck are banned from the public schools and the Ottoman language is being reinstated. It is the city where you see barefoot Syrian children begging, and Kurds with wooden carts wandering through the streets hoping to earn something by sorting waste. It is the city where, in short, the neoliberal policies of Erdogan are increasingly impacting life, work and the arts, despite all efforts ‘not to bend’ (the slogan of the Taksim Square protesters).
A practice of suture This is the contrast-rich Istanbul that Marc Vanrunxt, at the request of 0090 artistic director Mesut Arslan, visited for a week at the end of November 2014 to present his work: he gave open classes, presented the productionDiscografie (2013) and the dance film Dieper/Deeper (2003), and took part in a debate at the university. More than a workshop or an audition for the production Atmosphere (which Vanrunxt will make next season with five Turkish dancers), the choreographer summed up his stop in Istanbul as ‘an encounter’, ‘an exploration of the art of choreography’, ‘sharing a way of working that developed from practice’. This exchange comes at a time when suture(a hem or the process of stitching up a wound) is becoming an increasingly decisive strategy in his work. This sutureappears not only in the way the choreographer has been producing his work since 2001. Vanrunxt and Salva Sanchis ‘separately together’ are developing their artistic process under the heading of Kunst/Werk [Art/Work]. In addition, Vanrunxt is also increasingly entering into collaborations that place his signature in a new context, that challenge it, and that at the same time emphasise its uniqueness. With For Edward Krasinski (2010), Vanrunxt and Salva Sanchis individually worked on a choreographic answer to Morton Feldman’s Triadic Memories, for Etienne Guilloteau and Georgia Vardarou respectively. Both solos were performed simultaneously as a split screen choreography. Discografie further developed this principle of ‘shared authorship’. Vanrunxt and Arco Renz each created a solo for Rob Fordeyn. Both solos were then interwoven into a single production. Or as Vanrunxt puts it: ‘I like to cut open my work and sew something new into it.’ The continuing quest to relate to other contexts, choreographic visions and poetics, without compromising his own style, is perhaps one of the reasons that the choreographer has ‘survived’ the leap from the Flemish Wave to today. This was not easy.