” Hallo!” is a performance about not hearing and not being heard. It was created in the aftermath of the “Gezi” protests – the name of a park in Beyoğlu district of Istanbul, which was to be demolished by the Turkish government, upon which an unorganized civil society protest wave took over for a period of time starting May 28th 2013.
Hallo! is a political statement reflecting on the protests and how they were perceived by various factions. It is a two-part performance. In the first part it puts the audience in the center along with the performer Gizem Aksu. Hearing, listening yet being helpless and disconnected. Every performance creates a one time, never to be repeated piece changing with the audience. In the second part, where the audience has the chance to voice their feelings and thoughts about the performance, people reveal how they relate to the piece and also how it relates to their lives.
This work is also a result of a hopeless and helpless time after “Gezi” for Aydın Teker. At a time when she started thinking that “nothing she ever did had a meaning”, Teker realized that people were talking but not really listening. This helpless moment of not being heard moved her to choreograph this performance. One can observe the audience and how the feeling of “not being heard” affects them as the performance progresses.
A pioneer of contemporary dance in Turkey who has worked in Istanbul for over twenty-five years, Aydin Teker likes putting bodies into destabilising situations, testing their capacity for dynamic adaptation to the extreme. She graduated from Ankara State Conservatory in 1973 and joined Ankara State Opera and Ballet as a dancer. Thanks to a scholarship in 1976, she moved to London and then to the USA. She received her B.F.A. and M.F.A. from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Her works have been shown in many countries and renowned festivals including the Zürcher Theater Spektakel (Zürich – CH), KunstenfestivaldesArts (Brussels – BE), Festival TransAmériques (Montreal – CA), among others.
CREDITS
Concept and choreography: Aydin Teker
Performance: Gizem Aksu
Distribution: Something Great (Berlin – DE)
Tour Management: René Dombrowski (www.somethinggreat.de)
Tour Dates
