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From Zeybek to Zeybreak: Reimagining Anatolian Dance in Diaspora
Abstract
Since the beginning of large-scale migration from Turkey to Germany in the 1960s, Anatolian dance traditions have played an important role in the self-representation, political advocacy, and communal identifications of immigrants from Turkey and their descendants in Germany. Through the 1980s, the performance of Anatolian dance in the German diaspora emphasized a desire to maintain continuity with regional traditions in Turkey. More recently, a new generation of dancers and choreographers in Germany have drawn inspiration from Anatolian dance while seeking to reimagine its possibilities and potential for artistic, cultural, and political expression. In this paper, I discuss the choreographic work of Kadir Memiş, also known as Amigo, a Berlin-based choreographer and dancer who has pioneered a unique style of dance known as zeybreak. Zeybreak is a dance style that draws inspiration and elements both from the zeybek dance tradition of western Anatolia and from breakdance, a synthesis that Memiş situates in his experiences as a second generation Turkish German growing up in Berlin in the 1980s. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Berlin as well as the work of Anatolian dance scholars such as Metin And and Arzu Öztürkmen, I analyze Memiş’s creative reimagining of zeybek within the larger context of transformations in the practice and meaning of Anatolian dance in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. I also consider Memiş’s choreographic work as it relates to issues and conflicts in the representation of Turkish diasporic identity in contemporary Germany. Finally, I discuss the work of Memiş in introducing zeybreak to dancers and audiences in Turkey, considering the multiple paths of artistic exchange and circulation of ideas connecting Turkey with its diasporas. I argue in conclusion that Memiş’s work as a choreographer evokes the multiple senses of belonging characteristic of Turkish diasporic communities in Germany, and that his transformation of zeybek into zeybreak challenges understandings of Anatolia and its expressive culture as inextricably bound with the representation of regional identities.
Discipline
Media Arts
Geographic Area
Anatolia
Europe
Turkey
Sub Area
None