Wednesday December 7, 2011 - Over the past couple of years I've been meeting fascinating people from the realm of dance; one woman who I find particularly intriguing is Nejla Yatkin. I first saw Nejla dancing at a Dancers Responding to AIDS gala and was spellbound by her power and grace as a dancer. This led me to contact her and find out more about her work. One of her most recent projects was WALLSTORIES which I got to see in the studio and which Kokyat later photographed in performance.
Now Nejla is preparing OASIS (Everything you ever wanted to know about the Middle East) and I stopped by at the DANY studios today to watch her working on the opening segment of the piece: a duet that she is dancing with Korhan Basaran (photo above), followed by a dynamic and expressive solo for Korhan. They rehearsed for a few minutes, with dancer Fadi Khoury also learning Korhan's part. Then Nejla and Korhan donned blindfolds and ran thru the duet and solo.
OASIS will explore the beauty, mystery, violence and poetry of Middle Eastern cultures; I'm looking forward to watching Nejla and her dancers - who I so admired for their work in WALLSTORIES - as the new work develops. You can help support the creation of OASIS here. Even at this early stage I can see (and hear) that it's going to be a work that will resonate on many levels.