Choreographer, Stage & Artistic Director
Beyhan Murphy is a prominent dance figure in Turkey and a graduate of London Contemporary Dance School.
She was trained by Jane Dudley, Nina Fonaroff, Juliet Lewis, Bernd Berg, Anthony Van Laast, Robert Cohan at The Place before she graduated in 1978.
She lived and worked in the United Kingdom between 1978-1992 as a freelance dancer-choreographer & teacher.
Since her return to Turkey in 1992, Murphy became a resident choreographer for the State Opera & Ballet and founded and directed two institutional contemporary dance companies who are at the vanguard of contemporary dance in Turkey, Ankara MDT (1992) and Istanbul MDT (2011).
With the support of The British Council, she invited many UK based teachers and choreographers including Richard Alston, Ashley Page, Michael Popper, Kenneth Tharp, Mark Baldwin, Isabel Mortimer, Ben Craft, Matthew Hawkins, Ballet Boyz, Akram Khan, Lloyd Newson.
During her artistic directorship; as well as British choreographers, she acquired pieces for State Opera and Ballet from other international choreographers such as William Forsythe, Angelin Preljocaj, George Balanchine, Goyo Montero, Barak Marshall, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, Itzik Galili, Andonis Foniadakis among others.
As a choreographer she wrote & created the full-length modern dance dramas all based on Turkish themes and are in the repertoire of State Opera & Ballet.
She has also choreographed the movement and dances for operas; Midas, Orphee & Eurydice , Faust and Don Quixote.
For the Turkish State Opera & Ballet; BM organized a record number of tours to United Kingdom, Bosnia, France, Egypt, Germany, USA, Israel, Macedonia, Malta, Georgia, Spain, Algeria, China, Slovenia, Bahrain, Thailand, Netherlands, Greece, and Australia.
Beyhan was the Director of the Performing Arts of Istanbul 2010 European Culture Capital Agency, during which she initiated and ran several contemporary dance projects. She also created several dance platforms and festivals : Dans Platform Turkey 1 & 2, and Dans Platform Istanbul, guided ongoing projects such as Turkish Choreographers, School Matinees and trained a generation of dancers, stage management staff, project managers and educators.
Beyhan was a jury member for the Korea International Modern Dance Competition in 2015, 2017 and 2018 and for Istanbul Showzone 2024.
She is the holder of several awards granted by the Ministry of Culture & Tourism, Mevlana Foundation, Rotary Club,IBAFF Premio mias Barzaj (Spain) and Afife Theatre Award for best choreography for the musical ‘Alice’.
After leaving her tenure at the State Opera & Ballet (1992-2023) she is now working as a free-lance choreographer and stage director.