DADAO 2026-2027
DADAO 2026-2027
Ezgi Turker and collaborators
OMID is a site-specific performative walking tour that intertwines the migration story of Omid, the last White Siberian crane in Western Asia, with themes of displacement, loss, migration, and resilience. Through movement, storytelling, and audience participation, the work explores how landscapes hold memory and how bodies navigate belonging within changing environments. Rooted in ecological and social histories, the project reflects on settlement, migration, and the relationship between human and more-than-human worlds while engaging local communities through embodied experience.
Ezgi Turker and collaborators
Ezgi Türker is a Turkish interdisciplinary contemporary dance informed performance artist living in Mohkinstsis/Calgary. She has BA & MA in Political Science and she trained in modern & contemporary dance. She is the co-founder of aeigis, an initiative for Contemporary Dance Research and Lecture-Performance Series and purespace, a multidisciplinary and inclusive dance studio in Istanbul. She performed in festivals and exhibitions in Istanbul, Izmir and Ankara and in Canada performed at FOOT Conference in Tkaronto/Toronto; Fluid Festival, IGNITE! Festival, High Performance Rodeo in Mohkinstsis/Calgary as a performer. As a performing artist, she sees arts and dance as a catalyzer for positive impact allowing to communicate complex concepts to wider audience by embodying ideas and emotions.
Photo: Ezgi Turker and Mitra Samavaki
Details:
Year of creation: 2025
Creation and choreographer: Ezgi Turker. Performers (on rotation): Barbara England, Alyssa Maturino, Jocelyn Mah. Narrator: Mike Tan - Jacqueline Russell (on rotation)
Text: With the use of archival texts created by Ezgi Turker. Outside eye: Mark Hopkins. Costume designer: Hannah Rae Fisher. With the support of Calgary Arts Development, Decidedly Jazz Dance and Dancer's Studio West.
Audience Type: Elementary (Gr. 1-7), Youth (Gr. 8-12), Families, Young Adults, Adults, Seniors
Length of work: 1 hour
Preparation time required on site: 30min
Technical requirements required on-site: Space for changing costumes, if possible.
Space required: Walking path at the George C. Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary or Wild Bird Trust of BC
Availability: I am available for residency, research, community engagement, and touring opportunities throughout 2026–2027, with flexibility to adapt the project to different sites and timelines across British Columbia. Ideally, the project would involve a research and creation period on location, followed by community workshops, public engagement activities, and performances of the walking tour.
My objective for touring OMID in BC is to develop the work in dialogue with local ecologies, migratory bird pathways, and the layered social and environmental histories of each site. I am particularly interested in coastal and wetland environments in Vancouver and Vancouver Island, where themes of migration, displacement, ecological fragility, and belonging strongly resonate with the project.
Through movement, storytelling, and participatory walking performance, OMID aims to create meaningful connections between audiences, landscape, and environmental memory while fostering conversations around migration, coexistence, and care for more-than-human worlds.
Community Engagement
I can facilitate a talk after the performance