Biography
Cihan Cöl is a dancer and choreographer with Turkish roots. He worked as a dance teacher at the dance club of Izmir for 10 years, before leaving Turkey in 2002 and moving to Belgium where he taught traditional dance at various organisations, such as Lucerna Basisschool Hoboken, L’ecole des Etoiles Bruxelles en Charleroi and TEKM vzw in Genk. Since 2004 he has been regularly involved in productions of Platform 0090. This exchange between traditional and contemporary dance has strongly influenced Cihan’s artistic practice. Where traditional dance is determined by a fixed canon of rhythms and movements, contemporary dance offers a lot of space to work creatively and reflexively with these elements.
With this research, Platform 0090 starts a more intensive collaboration with Cihan Col. Over the course of a year he wants to conduct an artistic research through the cross-pollination between traditional Turkish folk dance and contemporary Western dance. The aim is to create a unique movement language that lends itself to the creation of a contemporary dance repertoire with a strong intercultural character.
In residentie FORM-AT
12.11.2024 – 13.11.2024
This residency program is inspired by the studies of Selim Sırrı Tarcan, a Turkish folk dance choreographer and pioneer of intercultural exchange between East and West in the first half of the 20th century.
Tarcan, who was both a movement coach and a politician and represented Turkey at the Olympic Games, presented the traditional Turkish folk dance Zeybek at a networking event in Paris. His performance was impressive, but when he was asked to repeat the dance, this proved difficult because Zeybek was not standardized like Western dance forms. This underlined the fundamental difference between Turkish folk dance, which is based on improvisation and rhythmic patterns, and Western dance, which is codified but allows for choreographic innovation.
To bridge this gap, Tarcan created a new tradition: a couple dance based on the solo form of Zeybek.
Inspired by this tension between tradition and innovation, Cihan Cöl aims to bring Turkish folk dance – in particular the Zeybek tradition – into dialogue with Western dance traditions.
In collaboration with one of the largest conservatories in Turkey, three residency weeks will be organised in October and November 2024. During these weeks, students of folk dance and contemporary dancers will meet to exchange techniques and exercises. This trajectory will culminate in a public performance that combines traditional forms with contemporary choreographic strategies.