Afife Ballet Brings Turkish Stage Pioneer Back to AKM
IDOB's Afife ballet, about stage pioneer Afife Jale, runs at AKM until 29 October.
The Afife ballet, a new production about Turkish theatre pioneer Afife Jale, has premiered at the Atatürk Cultural Center (AKM) in Istanbul. The Istanbul State Opera and Ballet (IDOB) staged it in the AKM Türk Telekom Opera Hall, according to Türkiye Today. Four more performances follow this month.
The work is not entirely new. The Ankara State Opera and Ballet first staged it at AKM in 1998, and IDOB has now given it a fresh production.
What the Afife ballet shows on stage
The music is by Turgay Erdener. Beyhan Murphy wrote the libretto, the written story of a ballet, and created the choreography.
The ballet does not follow Jale’s life in a straight line. According to the report, it is set during her last period at Bakırköy Mental Hospital in Istanbul. Under the watch of nurses, she recalls four separate stages of her past. She then says farewell to life in the arms of Ziya, her cousin and first love.
Four dancers, each linked to a colour, represent those turning points: Golden, Red, Purple and Silver Afife. The Türkiye Today report names İlke Kodal in the title role. Berin Günay, Gizem Atik Tuncay, Deniz Kılınç Tunceli and Berfu Elmas dance the colour roles. Other characters include her husband Selahattin Pınar and the nurses, called the “Three Shadows”.
İbrahim Yazıcı conducts the IDOB Orchestra. Efter Tunç designed the sets, Bahar Korçan the costumes, Cem Yılmazer the lighting and Aisha Hajiyeva the video. Turkish listings suggest some roles are shared between casts across performances, so the names may differ on other nights.
Who was Afife Jale?
Afife Jale is remembered as the first Muslim Turkish woman to act on stage. At the time, Muslim women were barred from performing publicly. Türkiye Today dates her breakthrough to 1919.
Sources do not fully agree on the exact date of her debut. Some accounts, including a profile from Anadolu Agency, place her first role in the play Yamalar in April 1920 at the Apollon Cinema in Kadıköy. Others give 1919. Historians generally agree on her importance, but the date remains a point where sources differ.
Records also say she died in Istanbul in July 1941. The ballet’s hospital setting is part of its artistic framework. Treat it as the production’s dramatization, not as a documented scene-by-scene account of her final days.
How to see the Afife ballet
The season programme lists further performances at the AKM Türk Telekom Opera Hall on 14, 15, 17 and 29 October. For viewers of Turkish period dramas, the ballet offers a different way into the early 20th-century world of Ottoman and early Republican theatre. It shows how dance and design can interpret a life that screens and history books usually tell in words.
Source: Türkiye Today
Featured image: Zeynel Cebeci / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
