The collaboration was proposed by Aydin Teker, a Turkish choreographer, who was inspired by a bass performance by a Japanese contrabassist, Jun Kawasaki, in Istanbul in 2010, when Kawasaki was a member of "Sound Migration," a contemporary music collaborative project between Japan and Turkey.

Thier first rehearsals took place in Istanbul in September 2011, and,

since then, further rehearsals took place in Japan and Turkey alternately.

In the early stage of the rehearsals, the focus was on adjusting Kawasaki's non-dancer's body. At the same time, extensive research on the relationships between the instrument and the body was done while questioning how the traditional style of holding the instrument could be broken down and dismantled. For example, what new relationships between instrument and performer would be born when playing the instrument at an unnatural distance from the body, or the reverse, from an unnaturally close proximity to the body? Or what if the instrument was held upside down? After this and various other experimentation, certain movements remained and these were incorporated into the composition which became the premiere in Istanbul. The piece was premiered in Istanbul as part of the Akbank Jazz Festival, one of the most prestegeous international jazz festivals in Turkey in October 2012.

However, for the performance in Japan, Teker proposed an idea of revising the piece, by approaching from music, that is, by developing the piece using certain music pharase as material. This was even harder and a kind of conflictive and tensed process for both Kawasaki and Teker.

 The revised version was performed in Tokyo and Yokohama in February 2013. The performance in Yokohama was part of the Performing Arts Meeting in Yokohama 2013 (TPAM 2013).

The audience response was all different, according to what they tried to watch in the piece, which showed multitiered nature of the project. The piece throwed a lot of questions to the audiecne, about what body is, what dance is, what music is, etc., which shall be kept exploring in different manners in the future.

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the cultural foundations who suppored us, and a lot of individuals who spared no effort in providing hearty assistance and cooperation.

May 2013

Kiki Arts Project

A pioneering Turkish contemporary dance choreographer.
 

Teker studied at Ankara State Conservatory and New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. In her early period of creating work, her style was site specific, but this changed drastically after she was introduced to the Feldenkrais method in 1997. This method aims to expand the use of one’s self through awareness, in order to reduce limitations in movement. Since then, Teker’s style has become minimalistic, spending a long and precise process in close relationship with dancers, guiding them to gain freedom and a new creativity of their bodies.

Teker has created many pieces with many different dancers based on her original method, and her works have been performed in different international festivals all over the world. Among the works, in aKabi (premiered in 2005 in Haus der Berliner Festspielenit), dancers wore wobbly footwear 35cm high, and the original beauty born out of this extreme inconvenient and unbalanced body was highly admired. In harS (premiered in 2008 in Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels), the dancer and the harp created an aesthetic and symbiotic space together. Her latest work is Three Phases which was premiered in the 18th Istanbul Theatre Festival in May of this year. In Three Phases, two dancers standing on moving platforms generated multilayered unforeseeable relationships—between two bodies, between body and platform, between two ideas, and between two women.

Teker is currently the director of the Performing Arts Department and the head of the Modern Dance Department at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University in Istanbul.

A Japanese contrabass player and composer, Kawasaki is highly esteemed especially in his improvisational performance which is seemingly scooped out of his inner self.

Born in 1975, he studied contrabass under Tetsu Saito and Motoharu Yoshizawa while in university. He has performed with many distinguished musicians in and out of Japan. Recently, he is focusing on collaborating with Russian musicians, especially with Sergey Letov, the most important Russian avant-garde jazz saxophone player. Apart from solo activities, Kawasaki has participated in different groups in Japan, such as Maria Kannon (a legendary hardcore rock group), EXIAS-J (a well-known experimental improvisational group), aujourd'hui il fait beau (a unique trio with a vocalist/guitarist and a percussionist). 

Kawasaki has also composed and performed extensively for theater and dance pieces. His major works include music for Camille Claudel (a dance piece conceived and choreographed by Senrei Nishikawa, a traditional Japanese dancer), About 1hr. 20min. on Oct. 1 &2 in Brecht Festival (Japanese theatre company, Port B), Hamlet Machine by Adults and Children (produced by SPAC Shizuoka Performing Arts Center in Japan), etc. He is also a music director for a unique theatre company, Futsu Gekijo in Tokyo.

With a deep interest in words, Kawasaki has conducted for many years a series of seminars and concerts involving poetry readings and music.

Kawasaki has performed in many countries of the world, including the US, Russia, France, Poland, Ukraine and Lithuania. He was also a member of Sound Migration, a collaborative music piece between Japan and Turkey (Şevket Akıncı and Saadet Türköz from Turkey) which was premiered in Istanbul at the International Contemporary Dance & Performance Festival (iDANS) in 2010 then toured in Egypt, Hungry, and Japan.

He has released one CD: Jun Kawasaki: Left Bank, Right Bank.