"The Turks came from the depths of the Asian continent. (...) They were more often farmers than fishermen, rather warriors than navigators. They consecrated and sang the olive and the fig, cultivated like others the vine, the pomegranate, and the almond on the slopes that enjoyed the air of the Mediterranean Sea."
Predrag Matvejevic, Mediterranean Breviary
Ziya Azazi is an extraordinary dancer and performer: those who have had the fortune to see him work know the liberating force of his imagination and his deep and sincere pedagogical belief. Azazi is above all a contemporary interpreter of traditional Sufi dances: his decoding depends on a native analytical research that is not only artistic and conceptual but also personal and conscious. The issue of motion in realizing simultaneous states of physical awareness through dance has always been at the center of his work.
Dervish is a solo work consisting of two performances. 'Azab (which means Anguish, and lasts about twenty minutes) first shows the possible transformation thanks to a spiritual elevation combined with the speed of rotation, the tension, and the emotion produced by it. The state reached then becomes emblematic for overcoming anguishes and fears, confusions, and losses. The expressive dimension of this event is in close connection with the repetitive and recessive rhythm of Sufi music. Here, rotation and speed indicate unprecedented ways of repeating the rotation on a horizontal plane.
Dervish in progress, on the other hand, which follows after a short intermission, proposes for almost twenty-five minutes a completion of what was learned in the first part. At this point, an alternative and innovative method is introduced by the performer for further enhancement of joy and ecstatic repetition: the attainment of a trance state. The three costumes introduced to intensify through light the perception of colors and forms seem to dismantle every ritualistic boundary for a freer perception without any persuasion.
Born in 1969 in Antakya, Turkey, Ziya Azazi, thanks to a scholarship from the Summer Dance Week Vienna (Dance Web) in 1999, received an honorable mention as "Most Outstanding Dancer of the Year in Austria" from the magazine "Ballet International." Between 2000 and 2002, he was engaged by the Vienna Volksoper and, in Germany, by the Theaterhaus Stuttgart, and the Grand Théâtre de Genève in Switzerland. In 2004 he collaborated with Jan Fabre/Troublyn and between 2005 and 2007 participated in the D’Orient show of the Compagnie Thor.
