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.
Alongside the blitz careers of De Keersmaeker and Vandekeybus, Vanrunxt – the only homosexual choreographer in a field in which mainly traditional images of male and female were explored – was an outsider, a slow grower in a ‘wasteland where you’d better be quick or not do it at all’, says former art critic Myriam Van Imschoot. His work flirted with symbolism, decadence and modernism, with queer aesthetics, the mysterious and the occult, punk and performance art. Despite the varied reception of his work, he obstinately and at his own pace (it is no accident that time is the touchstone of his poetics) continued to follow his own path. Imschoot considers this ‘unwavering decisiveness’ emblematic for Vanrunxt: ‘In his work appears the basic figure of the injured loner, un homme blessé who, in spite of the many blows, keeps going and progresses in dignity.’[1] One-man political show Vanrunxt appears to share this resilience with the ten dancers who gathered in November to discover his work and – through this work – themselves. In Turkey, the socio-political context makes it much more evident not to make art than to do so (although you could easily turn this around: this context clearly makes art a necessity). There are scarcely subsidies available for independent performing arts. As befits an officially ‘democratic’ but gradually increasingly autocratic regime, most of the subsidy pot goes to the state institutions (theatre, ballet and opera institutions that are mainly represented in Istanbul) and the city theatres. The many private theatres[2] active mainly in Istanbul are largely dependent on ticket revenue, crowdfunding, commercial rental and external financing. They can apply for an annual subsidy of (maximum 13,000 euro), but only for the production costs of a performance, not for their general operations. By way of comparison: in 2012, the state theatres received 62.7 million euro, the municipal theatres in Istanbul 21 million euro, the private theatres only 1.5 million euro. The future looks even less rosy. Last year, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, then still under president Gül, proposed a contentious[3] law that targeted the future privatisation of all state cultural institutions. The proposal also mentioned the establishment of a new eleven-member administrative body (TÜSAK), political puppets appointed by the ministry who would distribute the subsidies for all art disciplines on a project basis. Even if the legislative proposal is revised, it is symptomatic of a government vision that sees no good in public subsidies and has no interest in the development of (young) artists.[4] As a result, there are few independent performing artists in Istanbul who are able to focus full-time on creating. The dancers at the workshop were no exception. Most teach at the Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University from where they graduated. Others work for the state ballet[5], do commercial work for television, or work in the hospitality sector. Being an artist in Turkey is something you do ‘on the side’. Hmmm, where have we… The organisation leads itself If the government doesn’t do it, you must do it yourself. The do-it-yourself motto of the punk generation with which Vanrunxt grew up is alive today in Istanbul. While Flanders is gradually discovering cooperatives, in Turkey this form of self-organisation has been around longer. In the last five years, an increasing number of alternative performance and rehearsal locations have sprouted in apartments, basements and garages. Çiplak Ayaklar, where the first three days of the workshop take place, is one such place. This old ironworks was personally funded and renovated by the members of the Çiplak Ayaklar Dance Company. The final sentence of the poem by İlhan Berk, after which the company named itself, summarises the studio’s aim: ‘It is a dreamland or at least the quest for one.’ A total of 74 artists, technicians, jugglers and musicians use the location; the money is shared. Half of the year is reserved for classes, the other half for rehearsals and performances. Which is necessary, since programmers for theatre or dance are non-existent in Istanbul. Mesut Arslan sees this as one of the greatest shortcomings: ‘We have water, flower and yeast. We have good bakers. But we have no managers to sell the bread for us. There is no vision of how the Turkish landscape can diversify, no cooperation based on artistic dialogue.’ Moda Sahnesi is also such a place. To build the ultra-modern cultural centre in Kadıköy, twelve friends – all working in the cultural sector – united in a no-boss structure. Some are known TV celebrities earning up to 15,000 euro per week, money that they invest directly in Moda Sahnesi.[6] Others rely on their savings or took out a loan. To date, the organisers have not earned a penny, but the venue has succeeded in breaking even, selling more than 54,000 tickets in 2013. How do they manage this? By clearly anchoring the centre in the neighbourhood and opening it up for workshops, literary seminars, acting classes, film screenings, lectures, concerts and hip parties. Moda Sahnesi appears to have found the right balance between artistic and commercial interests (the names of all sponsors are displayed largely on the wall) – a challenge that also awaits the Flemish art centres in the coming years. Doing and listening
Despite this shared resilience, in practically everything, Istanbul is a repudiation of the way Vanrunxt usually works. The city is not just ‘another’ context in which the choreographer briefly immerses himself, but a place that puts the basic principles of his thinking – centred around time and space – to the test. This choreographic concept is strongly influenced by composer Morton Feldman. Vanrunxt summarises it nicely in an interview on the occasion ofReal, So Real (his new solo for Marie de Corte): ‘Feldman provides a structure but no narrative. It is a labyrinth with structure and variation, without meaning, but with experience, in the here-and-now (…). Feldman gives the freedom and possibility to look and listen in your own way: it is not coercive but also not noncommittal.’ It is precisely the same rigid but free framework that Vanrunxt offers students. A typical exercise at this workshop is for example listening and doing, where the dancers are asked to move to long musical passages, not only Feldman but also Pink Floyd, to the repetitive sound poetry of Charles Amirkhanian and to drawn-out compositions by Penderecki. It is an exercise in developing a personal expression based on an external impetus, in creating a heightened awareness in the here-and-now, in the ad hoc following of music, in selecting from a variety of auditory information and translating these choices into motion, without immediately formalising them into a potentially interesting or beautiful image. Vanrunxt calls this principle instant choreography: a composition that writes itself. Another exercise is called 4 steps, based on Dune Street Project (2013). In The Disintegration Loops by William Basinski, the dancers explore the space diagonally in a pattern of four passes, a process that can easily take half an hour. Here one feels the space doctrine of Laban, the basis of Vanrunxt’s poetics and the inspiration for each morning’s warm-up: movement as direction, space as a dynamic context that changes under the influence of time, interior harmony as the effect of intense concentration. Vanrunxt’s recurring motto: ‘The art of choreography has more to do with how you do something than with what you do’. This shift in accent to a more process-oriented, introspective mindset that tries to get in touch with the ‘origin’ of movement, appears to open a mental space for the dancers. To a landscape in which artists (logically) seize every opportunity offered them, in which speed determines the daily rhythm, and lingering subverts, Vanrunxt brings tranquillity: concentration, strategies for exploration and reflection, a ‘sustainable’ experience. Women, stand up! This impatient but understandable desire to ‘freely’ create that sometimes puts on hold the attention to artistic exploration and the search that takes place on stage can be felt in the performances that are organised as part of the Europalia search for international performing arts programmers[7]. Coincidence or not, virtually all performances take just thirty minutes: time is not really taken to dramaturgically think themes through or to develop them. The still nascent language of forms contrasts glaringly with their distinct political overtones. WithYou’re not fish after all, Mihran Tomasyan made an ode to all artists who perished in the struggle for free expression (a tribute to assassinated journalist Hrant Dink). The position of women is also a recurring concern, which is not surprising given the recent statements of Erdogan. Asli Öztürk presents a sober duet in which she drives her two female dancers to exhaustion. Between the gunshots and the hard smack of the bodies against the ground can be heard the unmistakable message: ‘Women, stand up, you only have to want it.’ Experimental author and choreographer Gizem Aksu in turn presents a solo about her coming out, a daring theme whose vulnerability is underscored by her naked presentation. ‘I made this production to bridge the gap between my performance in public life and that of my personal life. We are haunted by a cultural memory that promotes outdated ideas about women, gender and sexuality. But beneath this repression brews so much desire for change.’ What is striking is that most of the dancers in Istanbul work individually, an economic reality that forces them into a certain isolation, treading water within the small circles of the contemporary dance scene in Istanbul. What also appears to be missing is the ability to suture, which lies at the heart of Vanrunxt’s work. This concerns a creative network, an external perspective during and after the process: from a lighting designer who gives greater dimension to the atmosphere shifts in Öztürks duet, to a dramaturge that gives Aksu’s autobiographical presentation even more depth, or a production manager who can think ahead so that ‘making theatre is not always a matter of reinventing the wheel’ as Vanrunxt experienced firsthand in performing Discography: broken lights and a defective sound system caused a one and a half hour delay. ‘The way we define professionalisation in Flanders is far removed from the reality in Istanbul. This will not change as long as there is no political commitment’ explains Arslan. ‘This applies to all actors in the process: newspaper critics limit their articles to a judgement on taste. There is drama training, but it is still very text-oriented, which is at odds with the desire to experiment freely on stage. Light and music designers are nowhere to be found. This context makes it difficult to develop artistic ideas. There is also little international work programmed that can be emulated.’ It is a witticism, but artistic quality and a professional working environment go hand in hand. The artists there are aware of this. Their introductory talk to the foreign Europalia programmers sounds almost like a cry of despair. Anxiety and
uncertainty about the future are the feelings that define many of the conversations. ‘Your absurd is our reality’ is a saying that resonates throughout the week. And yet these young artists continue unabated their quest for a dream country (small or large), for the space and time to develop their own ‘art of choreography’. Now perhaps more than ever.