Past event

28 May 2022

Piazza Luini

22:45
English Italiano

For one night, Piazza Luini will be the incandescent backdrop for Ta Fête. A Cypher ritual, a unique and original event, to the rhythms of hip-hop, created by Turkish-born Basel choreographer Muhammed Kaltuk who directs five dancers from his Company MEK.

The Oxford Dictionary defines the word cypher as a secret or masked way of writing a code. But cypher can also mean a circle or the number zero. With the birth of hip-hop, this word was used to refer to a freestyle dance jam where an open circle is created with people dancing around the center. A live dj-set accompanies the improvisations performed by a series of dancers moving to a dizzy mash-up of Kaltuk’s most recent creations: Father Politics, FivE e Man Up, three works that have a strong social and political impact.

choreography
Muhammed Kaltuk

dancers
Egon Gerber
Witthawat Tonja
Elina Kim Eduardowna
Lea Korner
Sophie Chioma

live DJ set
Massimiliano 'iarvo' Chiappa

production
Company MEK

Swiss dancer and choreographer Kaltuk grew up in a conservative Turkish family. At the age of fifteen he attended his first Hip-Hop dance class and fell in love with urban dance resulting in the success of his first dance group, Special Elements, from the time of its foundation. From 2015 to 2018 he attended the Höhere Fachschule für Zeitgenössischen und Urbanen Bühnentanz in Zurich. In 2017 he founded Company MEK for which he creates performances that draw on the world of Hip-Hop dance and contemporary dance, combining them artistically to produce completely personal creations. Today Kaltuk is working as a choreographer creating projects all over Switzerland and abroad; his works have been performed in festivals and theatres at home and in other countries, including, Theater Basel, Dampfzentrale Bern, Kaserne Basel, Tanzhaus Zürich, Theater Luzern, Theater St. Gallen, COLOURS International Dance Festival - presented by Eric Gautier, Theater der jungen Welt Leipzig and at the Theater Plauen/Zwickau. In 2020 he was awarded the prize for the best choreography from the Internationales Solo Tanz Theater Festival Stuttgart, obtaining a project of artistic residence at the Theater Plauen/Zwickau; that same year he was a finalist with Father Politics in the PREMIO competition for emerging talents in the world of theatre and dance.

Since the early 90’s he has worked as a DJ with different artists from the Milano music scene. He was involved in the production of the first musical projects by the aerosol artist Flycat and collaborated with AL Magazine. The long collaboration with Luca Gemma led him to play turntables and samplers both in recording studio and in clubs and festivals. He recorded, edited and mixed the underground group The Bizarre Collection albums, soundtracks for documentaries and short films by Luca Campus, sound performances for the avant-garde Teatro CRT. He organizes “en plein EAR”, a series of musical listening meetings by the cultural association Terzo Paesaggio. He teaches DJing at Scuola Mohole in Milan.