Two nights, one restaging
The AKM Theatre Stage programme for October 24 and 25 brings an existing work to a new company. Fernando Melo created Rüzgâr Ağacı for Danish Dance Theatre in 2023; this staging uses the MDTistanbul ensemble. A co-production of Istanbul State Opera and Ballet and the 30th Istanbul Theatre Festival, it places the transfer of choreography between companies at the centre of the occasion. The first Istanbul night is a premiere, while the work itself has a history reaching back three years. Those dates locate its original creation and the beginning of this staging separately.[1]
In his interview with Anadolu Agency, Melo says new dancers and bodies have given the work a different interpretation. He does not believe a production must always be staged in the same way. That approach makes the cast part of the material of reinterpretation, beyond a list of names inheriting established movements. A change of dancers alone cannot establish the extent of the change, however: ordinary adjustments to working with another company are also possible. The difference Melo describes is a starting condition for this staging; his statement does not measure its effect on an audience.[1]
Choreography extending from body to light
The production’s division of work shows that the transfer involves more than the dancers’ bodies. Signe Lykke’s symphonic music was recorded by Copenhagen Phil; Raphael Solholm designed the lighting and shares the scenery credit with Melo. Maria Ipsen’s costumes and Rafael Canete Fernandez’s sound design belong to the same production. Melo describes an approach to choreography that incorporates light, scenery and music alongside the body. The environment in which movement becomes visible is therefore part of the working field he describes.[1]
That division of work offers a concrete distinction for considering the restaging. Giving a movement to another dancer and establishing its place within light, sound and scenery are separate tasks. Melo’s account puts them inside one choreographic frame. It therefore allows a question about the relationship between the new cast’s interpretation and the surrounding design, without establishing which element dominates. Another possibility is that the difference lies chiefly in how the dancers inhabit the existing structure rather than in a large transformation of its design.[1]
The image offered to the audience
The work’s inspiration from Vilhelm Hammershøi belongs within this frame. Melo says he values changing perspectives and stage images open to more than one interpretation. He wants the audience to feel empathy with the person on stage. Empathy here is the choreographer’s stated aim, rather than a result established for Istanbul performances that have not yet begun. The painter’s name likewise cannot by itself describe the dance’s appearance; its stage expression depends on images formed jointly by the bodies and the design.[1]
For the two Istanbul performances, the identifiable change is MDTistanbul’s reinterpretation of a work created in 2023. The dancers include Demet Aksular, Ekin Ançel, Evrim Akyay, Müge Bayramoğlu and Mert Aksu. Placing this cast alongside the lighting, scenery, music and costume credits describes the scope of the co-production. The question at its Istanbul beginning concerns the space these new bodies find within an established stage world. Melo’s allowance for reinterpretation directs attention to precisely that relationship.[1]