Solum

Recorded at the CND 16 April 2005

In spite of a ten-year age gap, Mustafa Kaplan and Filiz Sizanli form a long-lasting partnership which is a benchmark in Istanbul’s choreographic community. By 2005 they had already created and performed five pieces together in ten years. Seen abroad, “Dolap” (a trio where the third member is… a huge refrigerator) and “Sek Sek” are emblematic of the renaissance in Turkish choreography. It was quite something to see them return to the solo in a new piece unveiled during Instanbul Danse at the Centre National de la Danse, Pantin. A great deal of curiosity was aroused when their respective work, developed by each of them quite separately, often thousands of kilometres apart, was nevertheless integrated into the one piece. This was a compositional challenge and it is called “Solum”, which in Latin means alone or only, but also the floor or ground. “The body is the floor. My body is the ground,” the two artists state by way of epigraph. They tackle the questions: “How far from the body does movement take place, and what lies between the two? Can I lie with my body? Can I suffer with my body? Can I destroy it? What are the deficiencies, disappointments and pretentions of the body?”

Filiz Sizanli is particularly interested in the relationship between truth and falsehood. She is inspired by thinking in the plastic arts, between the real and the imaginary. She has gone way beyond studio rehearsals to work out what a false movement might be, an illusion drawn out by perspective, a loss of the body swallowed up by the space. What truth of the body remains in the falseness of a situation one has to maintain?

Mustapha Kaplan, on his side, subjected himself to constraints, bonds and deformations of appearance to explore that which he could inflict upon himself as a child, which hurt and produced extreme sensations. It would be a deepening of his long-term approach to the body as a field of exploration, involving it in repetitive tasks and the distortion of actions such as running, leaps, lying down, where the basic principles of free-fall, collision and acceptance of gravity are put to the test in highly-physical, even risky exercises. In what he calls a “drama of energy”, his practical application and stressing of the notion of body-surface evolves towards an image of the body as a political entity.

Gérard Mayen 

Updating: April 2010