Dance wind blows in Istanbul at international festival

Istanbul’s art lovers will spend a month full of dance with the iDANS International Contemporary Dance and Performance Festival that starts today and continues through June 3.

Artists from Turkey, France, Belgium, USA, Holland, Germany, Lebanon, Croatia, Spain, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Egypt, Serbia, Slovenia, Cambodia, England, Italy, Iran, Russia and Singapore will be participating in the event that welcomes leading figures of contemporary dance and performance.

Some 40 works from 20 countries will be presented at iDANS. The festival is organized for the second time by the Bimeras Culture Foundation. This edition’s theme is "Dance On Time!"

Performances will be held at various venues including the French Cultural Center, garajistanbul, Lycee of Notre Dame de Sion, ÇATI Dance Studio, and the Roxy Club. An interactive question and answer session will be carried out between the artists and the audience after all performances.

Only festival of its kind
iDANS was launched in 2007 as Turkey’s only large scale international contemporary dance and performance event. It is a multi-disciplinary event that expands the notion of "choreography" and encompasses video installations, concerts, lecture, performances and dance works.

This year’s iDANS will present works that challenge conventional definitions of dance, body, and time. Since iDANS is also a curatorial project conceived around a particular theme for each edition, it also contributes significantly to the field of contemporary performance theoretically and conceptually. In this sense, iDANS is the only festival of its kind in Turkey, as well as being one of the few worldwide.

An award-winning immobile performance
One of the performances in the festival will be presented by a Croatian artist Ivana Müller that exhibits a show without any motion. Many might consider a dance performance without any movement strange, but the piece has been rewarded with the Award of Charlotte Köhler granted by the Prince Bernhard Culture Fund.

One of the most important choreographers of England, former soloist of British Royal Ballet, Jonathan Burrows, will present the dance of words in "Speaking Dance." This is a minimalist performance Burrows created with Italian musician Matteo Fargion. Burrows and Fargion received the prestigious "Bessie" Award in New York in 2004.

In a lecture-performance, Walid Raad will present part of an on-going investigation by The Atlas Group into the events and experiences surrounding the use of car bombs in the 1975-1991 Lebanese wars.

Singapore based theater director and curator Ong Keng Sen will present the 76-year-old classical Cambodian dancer Em Theay, one of the few survivors of the "killing fields" of Khmer Rouge in a docu-performance.

Belgian film director Thierry de Mey is also participating in the festival with "Light Music," which he created in collaboration with French percussionist Jean Geoffroy. Using movement sensor technologies, Geoffroy produces sound and magical images with the movement of his hands as if conducting an invisible orchestra.

Croatian artist Andrea Bozic will present on dance stage a film crew shooting a catastrophe survival scene. The film is continuously interrupted by scenes from other films, and the catastrophe gradually becomes real. Bozi? was inspired by Wolfgang Petersen’s "Das Boot," Ridley Scott’s "Blade Runner," Andrei Tarkovsky’s "Solaris" and Alfred Hitchcock’s "Birds" for this extraordinary performance.

Special weekend with local artists
iDANS will also present local choreographers from May 22-24 with a special program. The weekend will commence at the French Cultural Institute with a selection of emerging local choreographers and continue with the latest works of Taldans and Movement Atelier and a video screening of Mehmet Sander.

What does "time" correspond to in the making and researching of dance? Questions like this will be explored from multiple angles in an international conference that will be held May 16 and 17 at Istanbul Modern. Participants in the conference will include dramaturges, academicians, choreographers and researchers such as Geisha Fontaine, Myriam van Imschoot, Rudi Laermans, Boyan Manchev.

One of the contributors to the conference is Velimir Abramovic, founder of the Institute of the Science of Time. The physicist-philosopher will be analyzing dance from a mathematical vector.

50 percent discount for 12 performances
The admission fee for performances and concerts ranges from 12 to 18 Turkish Lira. The entrance to the conference is free. On the other hand, in line with its aim to introduce the latest ongoing trends in this field to the Turkish audience and choreographers, the Bimeras Cultural Foundation will return half of the admission fee to those who will watch 12 performances at the festival.

Tickets are available at Biletix and at box offices for each venue. For further info about the festival, please visit www.idans.info.