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Scenes From Turkey: Oriental Dance, Part 1

© Shira

I spent July 10-22, 2000 in Turkey through Morocco's "Tantalizing Turkey" tour. Since this tour was organized by a dancer for dancers, the itinerary incorporated several evening shows featuring folk dance and Oriental dance. ("Oryantal tansi" is the Turkish-language name for belly dance, so the correct translation into English would be "Oriental dance".) This article offers pictures and commentary on what we saw.

This picture shows the first Oriental dancer to appear in the evening show at Orient House in Istanbul on July 11, 2000. She used entirely Arabic music for her show. The use of evening gowns like this is new in Turkey--in the past, dancers used the familiar bra/belt/skirt combinations. In the 1980's and 1990's, Egyptian dancers began to use beautiful evening gowns like this, and it is reasonable to assume that this dancer may have been inspired by the costumes used in Egypt.

Would you like to get a better look at her costume? If so, click here for additional pictures of her.

Important note: The shows we saw in Turkey were done specifically for the tourist audience. We did not see any performances that were primarily intended for local people. Also, nearly all the shows we saw were specifically chosen by Morocco based on which shows she knew to be good from her previous visits to Turkey. Therefore, all my comments about what I saw, and the pictures that I've posted, are based on a subset of the Turkish dance scene: the best of the shows available to tourists at a specific point in time. Please don't conclude that my comments are representative of all Oriental dance in Turkey, because they're not.

This picture shows the second Oriental dancer to appear at the show at Orient House in Istanbul on July 11, 2000. She too used entirely Egyptian music for her show, and wore an Egyptian-style costume.

Would you like to get a better look at her costume? Click here for additional pictures of her.

Some highlights of what I observed in the shows we saw:

• Music Chosen. Nearly all the dancers used Egyptian music for their performances. Hardly anybody used Turkish music. I found this disappointing, since I like Turkish music very much.
• Costuming. Based on what I've heard from other people who visited Turkey in the past, I expected the costumes to be very, very skimpy. Although there were indeed a few skimpy ones, the majority were quite tasteful, and would have been acceptable in a typical U.S. family-oriented restaurant. Some of the costumes did have some daring cutouts, but I felt they were artfully done.

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