Events

We participated in the Trabzon City Days festival, organized jointly by the Gola Culture, Arts, and Ecology Association and İKSV. This festival aims to strengthen the culture and arts ecosystem in the Eastern Black Sea region and foster collaboration between civil society and local governments through a participatory cultural policy perspective. Although the festival's music and dance events were canceled due to the loss of life in the forest fires, we joined musician Kemal Gümrükçü on a breakwater on Ortahisar beach, challenging the political administration's approach to shutting down art, which is the first thing that comes to mind during these hardships, and viewing music and dance as mere entertainment.

This year, we participated in the Pülümür leg of the music village events, which have been organized for many years under the motto "alternative arts gathering," with two different workshops. Our first workshop was "Basic Exercises for Traditional Dances," and our second was "Vasburagan/Van Area Dances." At the end of the five-day program, we performed at the Pülümür public concert with our workshop participants and other artists participating in the music village.

As Biridardans, we are visiting Miraz, a company that produces musical and cultural productions for Mesopotamia and its surroundings, expressing linguistic, religious and cultural differences and commonalities through artistic productions, with our different stages.

We participated in the Hopa Seafood Festival, organized jointly by the Gola Culture, Arts, and Ecology Association and İKSV. The festival aims to strengthen the culture and arts ecosystem in the Eastern Black Sea region and foster collaboration between civil society and local governments through a participatory cultural policy perspective. We opened the festival with a "sea-fish-man" scene on the historic Hopa Pier.

We participated in the Borçka Iron Apple Festival, organized jointly by the Gola Culture, Arts, and Ecology Association and İKSV. This festival aims to strengthen the culture and arts ecosystem in the Eastern Black Sea region and foster collaboration between civil society and local governments through a participatory cultural policy perspective. On the first day of the festival, we performed our "sea-fish-human" and "meeting" dances on the main stage. On the final day, we performed our "Those who can't see the Cinka think who dance as crazy" dance, specially prepared for the festival, on the Borçka Karagöl pier.

This year, the Music Village workshops took place in Istanbul for the first time over a weekend. We participated in this event, held at Aler Music in Ataşehir, with a presentation and workshop titled "Vasburagan/Van Dances." Together with the participants, we explored the transformation and survival of geography, history, and dance, and we conducted a comparative study of dances like Gorani, Qertsi, Meyroke, and Papuri, which took root in present-day Armenia after 1915 and continue to be performed, with their surviving versions.

Within the scope of Şişli Municipality's 'We Şişli' events, we took part in the opening events of the 'Friday - Saturday - Sunday' photography exhibition, consisting of the works of seven photographers from different religions and sects, between 21-23 December.

Seven photographers, aiming to live together, love, understand, respect, express, and introduce others to new cultures, are helping to strengthen the bond between peoples through documentary photography. Beliefs are as old as human existence itself and, as with the rest of the world, are one of the sources of the diversity of this ancient land we inhabit. While they may have different practices, customs, and traditions, all religions share the same message: 'Togetherness, loving one another, knowing and respecting one another.'"

We performed our 'meeting' scene in the foyer of the Nazım Hikmet Cultural Center, in front of the exhibited photographs, among the photographers and the visitors of the exhibition.

As part of the 20th Hopa Culture, Art and Sea Festival, we performed our dance-music-narrative performance at the Hopa Museum, together with the informans artist Sevilay Refika Kadıoğlu, in the garden of the house where Xelimişi Hasan was born.

We held a workshop where we shared the products of our year-long study titled “Traditional Dances and Staging” and worked on different forms of traditional dances together with our audience, hand in hand.

We are participating as instructors in the 'Horon School', one of the tours organized by Goluri in the Eastern Black Sea region, which invites people to think, perceive and feel in harmony with all the instruments of nature and the polyphonic culture of the Black Sea. This tour aims to establish a healthy relationship with nature and to promote the ancient culture and languages of the Black Sea.