An embodied research on the cross-cultural, diasporic practice of Çiftetelli (Greco-Turkish belly dance) as a tool for collective healing, feminist place making and queer joy. The project aims to bring together old and new migrants from the east Mediterranean and the SWANA region to transmit stories, rhythms and dance moves.

Çiftetelli carries memories of the Ottoman times and can become a tool for emancipating non-eurocentric multicultural subjectivities, putting in question the European construction of the ‘Greek miracle’. It brings ambiguous connotations seen by an orientalist gaze, but incorporates a rare potential for social, cultural and sexual resistance.

The focus on dance allows the work to touch on the trauma of cultural and physical displacement stored in the body of the communities, as well as finding joy, kinesthetic pleasure, empathy and common histories through a ‘body topography’, where the body is a topos, including historical layers of sensations and temporality. The research goal is to use movement as social text to produce counter-narratives, new subjectivities and traditions, where the collectively owned embodied culture transcends imposed constructions of gender, sexual, racial, ethnic, national identity, class, age and ability.

The research is conducted through field work and the formation of women and queer people circles, in localities related to the artist's diasporic background and family history:  Athens, Chios, Lesbos (Greece), Izmir, Çesme, Istanbul (Turkey) Cairo, Alexandria (Egypt), Nicosia (Cyprus) and Brussels, Ghent (Belgium).

the project is currently supported by Yellow Brick (Athens), Xarkis festival (Nicosia), The Green Corridor (Brussels), SOFAM (BE) and newpolyphonies (Brussels)