How did you come to the field of dance education and what is your personal focus?
I was born in Turkey and moved to Berlin-Neukölln with my parents as a child and grew up in clubs and youth centres. That was my second home; I learned to dance there even though my parents were against it. My first dance teacher often sat with us and we first listened to CDs, talked, and then the dancing was no longer the most important thing, but rather this coming together, the familiarity of it. That’s what I try to do when I teach dance in youth centres myself today – build a relationship with the kids. Later I became an educator for children, but on the side I continued to dance, teach, organize dance battles for young people, I founded an association and developed international exchange formats, for example between dancers from Berlin and Cuba. I have also had a lot of contact with contemporary dance, and would describe myself as an all-rounder, not just a hip-hop dancer.
What insights and experiences have you taken away from your practical experience with the Mobiler Tanzsaal?
First I always ask myself how I can grab these children, and to do that I have to understand them. Where do they come from? What do they want? What do they need right now? Maybe what they need right now most is to let off steam. Then I forget about the dance, and I run a few laps around the building with them first. When you work with young people from so-called “problem districts”, forging a relationship is the most important thing, I remember that from my own past. What we did with the workshops also always went well when there was a contact person on site who the children knew really well.
I’ve also noticed that the workshops go best when they’re outside, and when they’re open, when people can come and go. And if it goes well, and the kids are motivated, then it’s important that it continues. I think it’s better to have fewer locations and to build something sustainable instead of offering something in many places for a short time.
Where should dance education and outreach work in Berlin go, what do you think is important for the future?
I have the feeling that everyone in the dance scene is busy with their own projects and that this basic networking is missing. I would also like to see more dance in public spaces. I wish that it would be more part of everyday life. I also sometimes wonder what the purpose of dance education is supposed to be, and who actually benefits from it. Maybe it only makes a difference for 3 or 4 children out of 100. But if I have to answer the question honestly, I can only say that my whole life today has to do with dance – my friends, my job, my child, all the trips I have made. Even the fact that we are talking to each other here now has something to do with it. And all this because I came into contact with dance at the youth club. It wouldn’t have happened on its own, my parents would never have sent me to a dance school. And then I pursued it, and that set something free inside me, shaped my life.