Candaş Baş is a Berlin-based choreographer, director and performer from Istanbul. Her work investigates the body as a political archive: a place where systems of power, migration, gender, visibility, violence and survival are inscribed, repeated, exhausted and transformed. Through choreography, theatre, voice, text, live sound and moving image, she examines how power enters the body, regulates behaviour, produces identities and determines who may remain visible.
Across more than thirty years of artistic practice, Baş has developed a distinctive movement language drawing on everyday gesture, popular culture, traditional and ritual practices and risk to create a raw movement vocabulary. Her current research focuses on the systems that organise bodies and behaviour: how performers respond to pressure, how audiences become part of a performance mechanism, and how participation itself can become a choreographic force.
Baş co-founded Çıplak Ayaklar Kumpanyası, one of Istanbul’s pioneering independent contemporary dance collectives. Her work has been presented internationally at institutions and festivals including Volksbühne Berlin, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Radialsystem, Festival d’Avignon Off, NYU Abu Dhabi Arts Center, London Camden Fringe, Question de Danse, Festival Internacional de Danca Contemporanea, Sofia Dance Week, IDANS and the Istanbul Theatre Festival. Her choreographic work has also extended into large-scale popular culture and music contexts, including the Eurovision Song Contest. She has performed with Constanza Macras / Dorky Park, Dance On Ensemble and the Forsythe Company. She previously taught at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University and served on the board of the Actors’ Union of Turkey.