By Colin McGregor
The Turkish dancer and artist Eylül Bozok visited Quebec for the first time in 2019. She fell madly in love with the city, so much so that she decided to leave her career as an urbanist in Istanbul to move to Montreal. She focused on contemporary dance and studied at Concordia University.
It was at the Sfouf Café in the Village neighborhood that I met with her to hear her talk of her experiences. What impressed her most was the number of artists here as well as the fact that the people were so friendly.
After she got her bachelor’s degree in contemporary dance, she became a performance artist. She also works as a chef at the Usine Grecque restaurant in the Village. She says Greek and Turkish cuisines are quite similar, so she feels close to her roots. She enjoys excellent relations with her co-workers. “They’re very much behind me. The come see me when I dance.”
One of her greatest hurdles, as with many immigrants, is learning French. With an end date on her work permit, she has had to learn the language very quickly in order to pass government exams to stay in the province. She did pass those exams, but while studying for them she felt rushed. She loves the French language but would have preferred to be able to learn it at her own pace.
When she arrived in Montreal “people were very sympathetic. But there were a lot of documents to fill out. It was a very difficult time for me. I don’t have any family here, I am all alone. My courses were in English, but that’s not my mother tongue. Having to work in French was a little stressful.” These stresses led her to question her decision to move. In Turkey, she didn’t question anything. She simply went with the flow of life.
Even though her life had been beautiful in Istanbul, Eylül learned to appreciate the joys of being uprooted. “I hadn’t had any real problems before. But I loved the challenge of being in Quebec and learning French. I enjoy friendships with homeless people, it’s lovely.”
She learned to free herself through her performance art. “In Turkey I had a choreographer to tell me what to do. Here I’ve had to learn to choreograph myself and create what I wish to express.”
As for her performances, “I think you have to learn to show your vulnerable side, to show the things that everyone experiences and that everyone’s too ashamed to display. My main themes concern social taboos and women. Real life experiences aren’t really esthetic or beautiful, but it’s painful to be a human being, especially a woman. That’s why I’ve turned to performance art.”
Her dance sessions last five or six consecutive hours. She often performs in tandem with another artist. “It’s very experimental,” she explains. “It’s the creative process. The public can tell me what to do. They control and manipulate the whole show. The artist manipulates their minds.”
She says: “Contemporary dance is beautiful. The form, the body. But now I push people to question themselves. I bring them discomfort.”
That same discomfort that pushed her to learn French: a new language in a winter nation.
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