[laboratuar]

Categories: Theater http://www.laboratuar.org

About the place

is a collaborative project ensemble, focusing on visual and performing arts;

aims at producing on- and off-stage experimentalperformance work, perpetually questioning the definition of “dance”, along with the discipline’s boundaries and its accepted means of creation;

basically feeds upon theory, methodology, tools, technique and material from contemporary dance, physical theatre, performance art, arcgitecture, film & video, design and literature, along with post-structuralist theory and the possibilities provided by “new media” technologies;

is an enterprise that centralizes, and aims at housing, instances of experimentation.

among its operational objectives is to conduct and produce experimental work that situate the body and movement within diverse physical, spatial, fictional, symbolic, conceptual or technological contexts.

History:
[laboratuar] is a place where the boundaries between heavy assertions and naïve aspirations, amateur and professional acclamations get jumbled up, where “i wish...” sentences articulated along with many people at many different occasions reverberate -- it is an enterprise that is indebted to an extensive network of people for the provision of conditions necessary for its operation, beginning right from its birth. when it comes to what lies before this little piece of drifting land with no permanent address:

• before everything else is METU CONTEMPORARY DANCE GROUP: metuCDG, for us, simply signifies countless people, immeasurable projects, incalculable time and effort spent for the sake of these works -- in this group which periodically changes blood every now and then, and which has left its stamp on college years for many of us, what is in question is a place “where we all grew up together,” as the saying goes...

• then comes METU CONTEMPORARY DANCE FESTIVAL and DANCE PLATFORM: as these two important events that has become annual meeting occasions for the community carry on, this is a period through which a new frame of mind that goes beyond the limits of the group and middle east technical university gains life, new connections are established...

• the DANCE GATHERING @ istanbul, 13-15th june 2003 -- which has provided a common platform for the interaction between a large number of Europe-based network establishments focusing on culture & arts and the major actors of the turkish contemporary dance scene...

• BAREFEET DANCE COMPANY and the premier of “neden?” -- which has shown the courage, even if limited by circumstances, to come near dreams of collective production, collaboration and contact -- things we have always run after within the confines of the festival.

• the project “HOME SWEET HOME” -- through which the air of a completely different geography is breathed in at diyarbakır, where an unusual artistic vision is inaugurated.

• and, finally, the MLADI LEVI FESTIVAL at ljubljana, slovenia -- which provided the final conditions for the proliferation of our ideas about what is going on in europe and around the world, and what is possible...

all of these are significant mile-stones for the transformation of a choreographic study that started laying its first steps at the beginning of the summer of 2003 into a permanent project group...

Photos