Movement in Contemporary Staged Adaptations of the Alevi Semahs (1982-2018)

The semahs are musical and movement practices enacted at the core of religious ceremonies called ayn-i cem which Alevis communities perform to fulfil diverse social and spiritual needs. As part of urbanization, migration, folklorization and heritage-making processes, since the 1970s, in urban environments of Turkey and Europe, these practices started to be adapted and performed also outside of these ritual contexts. As part of folklore and of professional performing arts projects, both Alevis and non-Alevi actors and dancers started to learn and perform the semahs on the stage. In this way, the practices became a summative emblem through which the core tenets of the Alevi belief systems and cultures and its resistant stance towards the national imagination came to be divulged and promoted to audiences of Alevis and non-Alevis alike. Paying attention to some of the public and professional performances of the semahs outside of the ritual context, in this thesis I argue that since the 1980s, the adaptation of the semahs into performing arts frameworks had a pivotal role in the contemporary ‘explosion’ of Alevi identities in Turkey and internationally. To sustain the argument, through the presentation of ethnographic material gathered during long-term and multi-sited fieldwork research, I analyse three performing arts projects. Resorting to scholarship in Anthropology, Performance, and Dance as well as to critical application of Laban-related movement analysis methods, I show how each of these stage projects displays a different layer in the imaginative re-workings and stylizations of the semahs on a transnational scale. Accordingly, by examining historical changes in the transmission of semah movements and participation in semah events, I impart new knowledge on themes of embodiment, interactivity, participation and presentation within Alevi cultures