The festival's third edition, with the theme “Laughing -- Crying” and dedicated to the late modern dance pioneers Pina Bausch and Merce Cunningham, who both passed away this summer, comes just months after iDANS 02, which brought together 83 artists from 20 countries.iDANS 03, running from Oct. 10-31, will present numerous performances related to the fest's main concept, which organizers say is aimed at questioning “the still lingering dualism of the mind versus the body in contemporary culture.”
The New York-based Nature Theater of Oklahoma (NTO) will open iDANS 03 on Saturday evening with their modern-day take on “Romeo and Juliet” at İstanbul State Theater's Tekel Theater in the Üsküdar district on the city's Asian side. Members of the NTO will also hold a question-and-answer session following the performance. The ensemble, headed by Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper and praised by the Village Voice newspaper as being “one of New York's most talented ensembles,” will also be on stage Sunday for another staging of “Romeo and Juliet” at the same venue. Apart from the NTO, ensembles from France, Britain, Estonia, Bulgaria, Spain, Belgium, Portugal, Japan and Turkey are taking part in the event, the İstanbul-based Bimeras Cultural Foundation, which launched the festival in 2008, said in a statement.
The performances in the festival will cover such topics as “how can the gestures of laughing and crying be choreographed?” and “what might the formalization of such emotional experiences entail for artistic practices, as well as for a broader experience of the social and the political,” the statement said. (http://idans.info)
