Özlem Alkış

Nefes is a drawing of breath, a song, an individual expression, a retold story, the commitment to a group, a choir, a shared experience, a polyphonic uttering. It is a choreographic piece inspired by ideas in Alevi faith and its practices. Nefes means breath in Turkish. In Alevi culture, Nefes also denotes a sung poem that is performed by musicians at ceremonies and gatherings. Nefes are the only means to pass on Alevi teachings, painful history and secret identity, from generation to generation. They are observed as being sacred, for they give a voice to the Alevi people and their heritage.In the performance, the voice’s physical quality becomes an option to situate oneself within a group and the surroundings. It becomes a strategy of relation, of reaction, of reshaping, as well as of coexistence. A force that creates shared experience and spaces – aesthetically, physically, and imaginatively. Familiar meanings and associations are displaced by physical resonance in the work: Sonic landscapes, voices, movement and bodies search for joint spaces between mood, disharmony, reinforcement, suppression, and complimentarity. Affective environments, perceived by the skin, heard by the eyes and seen by the ears, unsettling, delightful, reassuring, deeply moving.

Duration: 50 min.

Following graduation in several dance educations in France (essais at CNDC in Angers and ex.er.ce at CCN in Montpellier), Özlem Alkış graduated with a master’s degree in Mediation in Dance in a Contemporary Context at the Cologne University of Music and Dance. She received stipends in the section Performing Arts at Akademie der Künste der Welt in Cologne (2016) and the Akademie der Künste in Berlin (2015). In her works, most recently in the Reverbs series, also coproduced by tanzhaus nrw, she repeatedly deals with resonance – as a social, musical, and physical phenomenon, and how movement may change perception, opening up glimpses into society.

Accompanying programme