Performance 
caner teker

KIRKPINAR

caner teker

is a supporter, survivor, and choreographer, was born in 1994 in Duisburg, and lives between Amsterdam, Berlin, and Düsseldorf. caner teker graduated as a master’s student at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 2019, followed by post-graduate studies as of 2019 at SNDO – School for New Dance Development, Amsterdam. caner teker deals with the intersectional entanglements of identity, work, and post-migration in the context of her personal experience as a German-Turk as well as the life story of their own family. In 2020, caner teker received the Förderpreis für Bildende Künste of the city of Düsseldorf and showed performances at Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Julia Stoschek Collection, Berlin, and Atonal Berlin, among others. The performance karadeniz was performed in 2021 at tanzhaus nrw and HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin.

Credits

Choreography caner teker Performance caner teker, Élie Autin Music Lou Drago  Dramaturgy Isabel Gatzke, Anna Mülter Styling Billy Lobos Text Stanton Taylor Creative production Sofie Luckhardt – A production by caner teker. Co-produced by SOPHIENSÆLE. With kind support from Kunst- und Kulturstiftung der Stadtsparkasse Düsseldorf and tanzhaus nrw. The 29th Tanztage Berlin is a production of SOPHIENSÆLE. Funded by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe. With kind support from Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Bangalore, mapping dance and Tanzfabrik Berlin e.V..

KIRKPINAR

In KIRKPINAR, caner teker appropriates movements from traditional Turkish oil wrestling, opening new queer spaces where the power dynamics of history, masculinity, vulnerability, and intimacy can be investigated.

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. In a makeshift wrestling ring, caner teker and Élie Autin 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 a microscope, it confronts us with the contradictions and silences of our desire. Again and in other words, it asks us to ask ourselves why we keep staring.

Curated by Lewon Heublein

caner teker

is a supporter, survivor, and choreographer, was born in 1994 in Duisburg, and lives between Amsterdam, Berlin, and Düsseldorf. caner teker graduated as a master’s student at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 2019, followed by post-graduate studies as of 2019 at SNDO – School for New Dance Development, Amsterdam. caner teker deals with the intersectional entanglements of identity, work, and post-migration in the context of her personal experience as a German-Turk as well as the life story of their own family. In 2020, caner teker received the Förderpreis für Bildende Künste of the city of Düsseldorf and showed performances at Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Julia Stoschek Collection, Berlin, and Atonal Berlin, among others. The performance karadeniz was performed in 2021 at tanzhaus nrw and HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin.

Credits

Choreography caner teker Performance caner teker, Élie Autin Music Lou Drago  Dramaturgy Isabel Gatzke, Anna Mülter Styling Billy Lobos Text Stanton Taylor Creative production Sofie Luckhardt – A production by caner teker. Co-produced by SOPHIENSÆLE. With kind support from Kunst- und Kulturstiftung der Stadtsparkasse Düsseldorf and tanzhaus nrw. The 29th Tanztage Berlin is a production of SOPHIENSÆLE. Funded by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe. With kind support from Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Bangalore, mapping dance and Tanzfabrik Berlin e.V..

20.05./
21.05.
Fri/​Sat
19.30
60 min
20.05./
21.05.
Fri/​Sat
19.30
60 min
TQW Studios

Day tickets including both KIRKPINAR and trompoppies: blackmilk available.

Waiting numbers for remaining tickets are handed out at the evening box office opening 30 min before showtime.

 
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