What’s in a Name?
Continuing my series about my current musings about the dance I practice, study, perform and teach, I wanted to share with you something I have been working on with my dance partners in Brighton.
Over the last year we’ve been having many discussions about the dance styles we perform. We’ve been studying and listening and trying to figure out a way forward that feels ethical, authentic and aligned with what we’ve been learning and how our views have changed and continue to evolve.
Last winter, while the UK was in lockdown, we spent our rehearsal time having these chats on a weekly basis and as it was approaching the time to return to the studio we were all in agreement that we wanted to continue to dance and that it was time to take some steps forward to start to see how it would feel.
After a lot of brainstorming about what dance meant to us, we produced a mission statement. We wrote this back in March and I’m not sure why I didn’t share it then! I’d like to share it with you now.
Connection. Collaboration. Celebration. Curiosity.
We dance to connect with our bodies, each other, music and our communities locally and worldwide.
We dance to collaborate, sharing our love of music and movement with other artists, events and audiences.
We dance to celebrate the joy of movement and the cultures, people and music that inspired our dance form.
We dance with curiosity, seeking out education from source dancers and musicians, growing and fumbling forward* in our journey to present a respectful and ethical performance.
In addition to this, we’ve been considering the name we have danced under for 11 years, Ter’zím.
When I created this with my dance wife Nix, we were looking for something that said something about us and also the dance; we both love the colour orange, this became Terracotta, then “Terracotta Taqsim”, which then became abbreviated to Ter’zím. We chose to spell it that way to make it seem exotic and mysterious and have people wondering what it meant.
Fast forward to today and I have come to the belief that taking on a name in this way only serves to other the host MENAHT* cultures of our dance styles.
In order to remain authentic to ourselves and the message we want to convey I have decided to retire from using the name Ter’zím.
I’m proud of the joy and vibrance we bring with our performances and would love this to continue in a more ethical way.
It is time for the next chapter. The last few months of rehearsals back in the studio have been pretty unstructured and low pressure with no performances for our group in the diary. We’ve been working on a bit of choreo, challenging ourselves with new finger cymbal techniques and playing with how we want our improv to develop. I’m grateful for the lack of shows to prepare for and happy for this time of exploration and learning.
We have so many incredible memories of the last decade. I’m not sure what it will look like next time you see us dance but we hope to be back with you soon!
*MENAHT = Middle East North Africa Hellenic Turkish