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Kırkpınar
Recording: 2020-01-11 , Tanztage Berlin 2020 | Sophiensæle (Video © Walter Bickmann)

Caner Teker

Kırkpınar

Tanztage Berlin 2020 | Sophiensæle

Production Details / Press Releases

GLISTENING BRONZE THROUGH TIME, or bright cis-white, fabulous muscles have always taken our breath away. Always inadequate in the shadow of their brilliance, the question isn’t so much what they do to us, but why we keep staring. Fixated, Caner Teker inserts themself into the nexus of desire, humiliation, and violence otherwise known as masculinity. A self-appointed impostor, their fraudulence at best confounds, at worst conceals, the binary distinctions between what is and isn’t, European or Turkish, male or female, gay or straight: queer, as the kids these days call it.

Based on the movements of traditional Turkish oil wrestling or Yağlı Güreş, KIRKPINAR is both a performance and an ongoing research project that restages ostensible acts of aggression not only as gestures of intimacy, but also as a ritualistic form of work. Following performances at Ringlokschuppen Ruhr and tanzhaus NRW (both 2019), the current iteration for Tanztage Berlin expands the earlier choreographies, while featuring new music by Lou Drago and Valerie Anna Zwoboda. In a makeshift wrestling ring, Teker and Aaron Ratajczyk softly sift their way through a series of predetermined postures at a tempo determined by their muscular endurance. Unrelenting, they slowly build a tension that knows no climax. But it’s hardly a secret that even the most violent sports harbour moments of physical intimacy and tiresome labor, least of all for sportsmen. Far from revealing what’s hidden in plain sight, KIRKPINAR is perhaps better seen as a projection of the men we should prefer to see: all tender touches and reciprocal support. More echo chamber than microscope, it confronts us with the contradictions and silences of our own desire. Again and in other words, it asks us to ask ourselves why we keep staring.

CANER TEKER graduated at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in visual arts and currently studies at SNDO – School for New Dance Development, Amsterdam.

[Source: play bill]

TFB Nr. 1409

Cast & Credits

CHOREOGRAPHY: Caner Teker
PERFORMANCE: Caner Teker, Aaron Ratajczyk
MUSIC: Lou Drago, Valerie Anna Zwoboda
DRAMATURGICAL SUPPORT: Isabel Gatzke
STYLING: Billy Lobos
TEXT: Stanton Taylor
A production by Caner Teker in co-production with SOPHIENSÆLE.
Supportet by Kunst- und Kulturstiftung der Stadtsparkasse Düsseldorf and tanzhaus nrw.

TANZTAGE BERLIN 2020
ARTISTIC DIRECTION: Anna Mülter
MANAGEMENT: Johanna Withelm
ASSISTANCE MANAGEMENT: Ece Tufan, Mascha Wendel
DRAMATURGICAL ADVICE: Alexandra Hennig, Isabel Gatzke
The 29.th Tanztage Berlin are produced by SOPHIENSÆLE.
Funded by Senate Chancellery for Culture and Europe.
Supported by Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Bangalore, mapping dance und Tanzfabrik Berlin e.V.

Sophiensæle

Sophienstraße 18
10178 Berlin

sophiensaele.com
Map

Tickets: (030) 283 52 66

Video Documentation

The video documentation is produced on behalf of the Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion. The purpose of this contract is to document productions in the field of contemporary dance in Berlin. The master recordings are archived by the University Library of the Berlin University of Arts. Copies of the recordings on DVD are available for viewing exclusively in the reference collections of the following archives (at media desks in these institutions):

University Library of the Berlin University of Arts
Mediathek für Tanz und Theater des Internationalen Theaterinstituts / Mime Centrum Berlin
Inter-University Centre for Dance Berlin (HZT)

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