Showing posts tagged “Aydin Teker”

The Independent Review:
Aydin Teker’s aKabi

Byron Woods · 1 Jul 2008, 6:45 AM · Comment

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“While three choreographers lured us into their dystopias last week,” writes critic Byron Woods, “one—Aydin Teker’s aKabi—was so overtly like [Kurt] Vonnegut['s work] that the title of a specific short story came to mind in the middle of the performance.”

Could this possibly be a good sign? Read on to find out: the pre-publication of the dance review from this week’s Independent Weekly follows.

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Yeats’ prophecy made manifest

David Fellerath · 26 Jun 2008, 2:14 PM · Comment

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[Ed. note: Brian Howe, a widely ranging culture critic and reporter, writes frequently for the Independent Weekly and other publications. He joins us today as a guest blogger.]

Rapture by Khadija Marcia Radin

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold…

—W.B. Yeats

ADF, June 25, Reynolds Auditorium. Featured Works: Rapture by Khadija Marcia Radin; aKabi by Aydin Teker; Umwelt by Compagnie Maguy Marin.

These three dances could hardly be more different, yet taken together and in sequence, they seem to comprise a narrative of spiritual disintegration—Yeats’ prophecy made manifest.

The center and the gyre were established in the first piece, the Sufi whirling dance Rapture by Khadija Marcia Radin. On a stage cast in cool blue, as a narrator recited the truth-seeking poetry of Jelaluddin Rumi, Radin drew us into a comforting maze of ritual. She twirled in one place, first slowly and with great restraint, then faster, with accumulating gesture and inflection, as if caught up in the great eddies of the music’s yawning vowels. Eventually, she broke free from her stable axis to twirl in ellipses around the center she’d abandoned. At the time it felt like freedom, although later, after the two subsequent pieces developed the narrative, it would feel like a symbolic prelude to deracination—the center’s breaking point. The gyre that Radin widened would soon fly apart, accelerating like the cosmos itself.

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