A special woman!

28 Blog 20.10.2025

photo by Jan Komárek

Yes it is Monday again, and I have been busy with work and writing the book this weekend. And right now I am actually in the studio, Gigi is sleeping on my left. Fifi is walking around (looking for the right moment to sit on my keyboard), Güneş is working on promoting and many other things… We had a lovely lunch and had our coffees! (oups!!! yes, I have broken my non coffee period today with a little Turkish coffee). It is the ideal time to write today’s blog!

Today my fingers will transpose all my feelings that live in my heart for Beliz Demircioğlu.

Who is Beliz? Beliz is my dear friend, my colleague, my soul-mate, a beautiful dancer, a lovely mother of 2 brilliant sons, teacher of many dancer lovers and actually the first Somatic Dialogue Facilitator. She actually is also my colleague in the long-term training. I have had the honour to have her as a co-instructor in the past Somatic Dialogue Facilitator Training and she will continue collaborating with us in the future training programs. It is a bliss working with her: we collaborate well, we complement each other, there has never been a competition between us, and we are able to go through conflicts and difficult processes constructively. To feel the mutual support and trust is really priceless! 

photo by Pavel Ovsík

Whenever I am with Beliz, I feel grounded, calm, excited, joyful and full of love for this woman. Whenever I think about Beliz my heart quivers and butterflies dance in my soul, because with her we are very very connected. It is even difficult to describe this in words. I may sound sentimental and romantic to some of you, but actually it is true. I wish you all a friend like her!

I met Beliz a long time ago, in her pointe shoes and beautifully arranged hair in the ballet studio where I had started as a young dance teacher. Our story is quite incredible and therefore I have asked Beliz some questions. She replied and I will share with you this interview I had with her.

We do not see each other very often and therefore to have this interview was very refreshing for me to listen to our story from her voice. It is always so interesting to see how the other has experienced the same things. It shows us again and again how unique the window of the heart is that opens to the same world.

Here goes the interview: please relax and have a coffee: 

Berrak: My dear, how did we meet, how did our story begin?

Beliz: Our story actually goes way back. I think it was 1994 or maybe 1995. I was studying at Emel Alper’s Dans Akademik Ballet Studio, and around that time, you both started teaching there and began working with your own company, Kumpanya Bale Türk, which you had founded in the same place.In my heart, I had an incredible love for dance:it was my day, my night, my every thought, especially classical and modern ballet. Meeting you was so precious to me, because you were teaching me modern dance, something I already loved deeply, and I wanted to understand that language even better. It doesn’t always happen like that with every teacher or every technique. We say “classical ballet,” “modern dance,” “contemporary dance,” but within them there are countless approaches and techniques.

Your approach and technique were in perfect harmony with what I wanted to create within my own body. As I continued taking your classes, one day you said one of the most valuable things anyone has ever said to me: you had chosen me as an intern for Kumpanya Bale Türk. I can still remember the excitement and joy that filled my heart in that moment, it still makes my eyes smile when I think of it.

Then one evening, after a performance, we were talking about a solo part, and you said to me, “Watch carefully, one day you’ll dance that solo.” That night, I remember I couldn’t sleep at all because of the fluttering in my heart, the excitement and that overflowing feeling. Sensations are such an interesting thing, as I write these lines now, I can feel that same feeling reemerging in my heart, even though 30 years have passed.

Berrak: During the process of Let Me Be, what did you experience as a dancer, an artist, and a woman?

Beliz: Let Me Be was a piece that took about a year and a half to create, that was the rehearsal process, but in reality, its beginnings go back even further. Since 2007, every time you were in Turkey, we worked together intensely. For me, the process of Let Me Be actually began two years before rehearsals started.

I had gone through a period of deep loss and pain that was very hard to carry. After some time, when my wounds had settled into ashes a bit, I reminded you of a promise you had made to me years ago: that you would create a solo for me. That’s how it began.

We were both deeply synchronized in knowing that this needed to be an intense, meaningful process: not something we would rush to create and put on stage. We could feel the process unfolding. I never really knew what you saw or carried inside: I simply surrendered to you. It felt like we were walking together through a dark forest.

For me, Let Me Be is also a story of profound surrender and companionship. As a performer, I surrendered every cell of my being to your choices, and as you were shaping a deeply personal and intimate work, you surrendered to what my body had to express.

Through your somatic dialogue, your compassionate, non-forcing approach that encouraged opening, we created space for this practice to permeate my life. At that point, it became impossible to separate Beliz the dancer, Beliz the mother, Beliz the teacher, or any of my other identities.

Let Me Be was a process of such deep unfolding that it became about the essential Beliz reconnecting with herself, rebirthing herself, reshaping her wholeness within her fragmentation, and reclaiming her own space to exist. It was painful, difficult, but also full of gifts. The work kept transforming, as I transformed, as you transformed, the piece transformed. That’s why some people came to watch almost every performance, because each time, it was something different.

The piece transformed my very existence. Even today, if we were to continue working on it, it would keep transforming,because at its core, the piece challenges the protective layers we build between ourselves and our true being. It questions our social conditioning, our accepted norms, and encourages us to listen to ourselves: bravely and simply.

Photo by Murat Durum

Berrak: How did you integrate this method into your life and profession? How did this integration affect you?

Beliz: Somatic Dialogue is a very authentic approach for me, I think that comes partly from working with you since I was very young, and partly from my own relationship to movement. For me, it’s like connecting with my own organic nature.

Because I studied, worked, and danced in New York and as someone who has always loved taking classes, I had the opportunity to be exposed to many different movement approaches. There are so many people and methods that look at movement and improvisation from completely different perspectives. They are all beautiful in their own ways, each offering unique richness to a person.

Among all of these, the doors that Somatic Dialogue opened for me allowed me to solve even technical issues in my body that I couldn’t resolve in traditional technique classes, guided by the body’s own wisdom. As I mentioned earlier, because it has influenced my existence and the way I live my life, it has of course also influenced how I practice my profession.

Through Somatic Dialogue, my capacity to truly listen to myself has transformed deeply. My capacity to “pretend” has decreased dramatically (hahahaaaaaa):  it just doesn’t work anymore! Compared to before, the truths inside me come out much more easily. Not in an uncontrolled or inappropriate way, of course it’s a process accompanied by awareness.

As a result, my interactions and relationships have become more honest, more intimate, and sometimes more challenging. But I think being real is so valuable that it’s worth facing those difficulties.

And of course, one’s capacity to listen and perceive changes profoundly. Anne Dufourmantelle speaks of the power of gentleness, and although we may agree with this intellectually, it’s not easy to embody it in our lives. Somatic Dialogue offers exactly that: a practice that helps us bring this awareness into our existence. It increases our connection with our inner resources, and instead of sweeping things under the rug, it allows what wants to emerge to flow, exist, and find expression through movement.

Thank you my dearest Beliz. I think that if you hadn’t asked for a co-creation, that turned out to be Let Me Be, I wouldn't have been able to refine many aspects of Somatic Dialogue. It was a unique period for me, because the whole piece was an artistic outcome of the practice itself: the power of being witnessed, lovingly, acceptingly. This is what happens in the sessions of Somatic Dialogue: the facilitator creates the space for the client/participants to feel safe and seen, supported and understood, and therefore their movement path towards their inner depths can happen.

Thank you Beliz for your faithful companionship and friendship.

The interview could go on and on, but every good Muhabbet has a temporary ending. I will continue working on the book now. And even there Beliz’s presence is supporting me. I consult a lot of things with her and in her elegant way she gives me such comments that bring clarity to my thoughts. 

I wish you all a beautiful day,

Stay in love and don’t forget to admire the trees in this season: they are so beautiful with their golden and warm colours 🙂

Berrak...