CAN BORA
SKETCHES / WORK-IN-PROGRESSES
1. Invasion (video & Live Chroma Key Video Installation)
2. Hanging in There (performance)
3. U________S vol.2: (dance performance)
THE INVASION (sketches):
This series explores themes such as slowing time, plunder, catastrophe, deconstruction, climate crisis, and invasion, situated at the intersection of the global and the intimate. My intention is to place the living body — flesh and bone — at the center of the stage, where the physical presence of the performer merges with the visual composition on screen.
So far, I have been working primarily with photography as a way to develop the research and gain experience. Currently, after shaping the visual composition, I am focusing on the choreography of the live body on stage. Bringing together movement, dance, and visuality, this project also marks the first stage of my research process for ATLAS, the program at ImPulsTanz, to which I was recently selected.
Studio Experimentation
Stage Design / Live Performance
Hanging in There
(2026- ATLAS residency, Impulstanz Festival)
Work-in-progress
This choreographic piece brings together dance, text, video, and live chroma key. The project began with an invitation from Soula Notosat Theater Kicker in Utrecht to share a story about rhythm at a storytelling night. What started as a personal text about childhood memories and Turkish folk dance developed into choreographic research during the four-week ATLAS residency at ImPulsTanz.
The work explores the body through states of burnout, dissociation, ADHD, overstimulation and exhaustion, asking how choreography can emerge from the nervous system rather than from a predetermined movement vocabulary. Through repetition, fragmentation, freezing, rhythm and shifts of attention, the body became both the material and the site of research.
Interestingly, folklore emerged unexpectedly within this process. Rhythms, gestures, and memories of Turkish folk dances resurfaced through the body, opening questions around cultural memory, queerness, and remembering joy.
Alongside the residency, I participated in workshops, watched more than 40 performances and engaged in exchanges with artists and practitioners. The process culminated in a 20-minute performance showing combining movement, spoken text, video and rhythm.
At its core, the work asks how an exhausted or disconnected body can move towards connection, and how joy and care can become embodied practices of resistance, relation and survival.
U_________S vol.:2
(2022-2026: ATLAS residency, Impulstanz Festival)
Work-in-progress
This ongoing choreographic research explores touch, connection, and the space between bodies: how do we hold the space between two entities, and how can we use our agency to shape the quality of that space?
The very first idea of this research began in 2019 with a score developed in conversations with choreographer Ufuk Senel, and it evolved into my graduation project at ArtEZ in 2022. Since then, I have continued developing it through two years of research and, in 2025, a residency at Mime Fabriek. In 2026, the work further took shape during the ATLAS residency at ImPulsTanz.
The choreography moves between highly mathematical structures and a fully somatic approach. A central methodology is Dynamic Expansion – Moveable Camera, a somatic movement technique developed by Shannon Cooney, which works with the quality of our gaze and expands our capacity to perceive. Through this practice, I have observed significant shifts in how dancers relate to their surroundings and to one another: sensory-based communication, proximity, attunement, recovery, and a sense of becoming-with begin to emerge.
The work investigates choreography not only as an organization of bodies in space, but as a practice of continuously negotiating the space between them. Touch and connection become questions of agency, perception and care: how we approach, withdraw, respond, listen and remain in relation.
The current research will culminate in a new choreographic work developed with Amsterdam-based dancers from diverse cultural and movement backgrounds. With funding, I aim to complete the work during the 2026–27 season.