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Turkish Ballet Comes of Age
| Article
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12164 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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2 / 1987 |
2,626 Words |
| Author
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Charles E. Adelson
Charles E. Adelson is a free-lance writer in the arts and a
frequent world traveler whose works have appeared in numerous
international publications. |
In 1947, when Ninette de Valois arrived in Turkey to assist in the creation of a school of ballet at the Ankara State Conservatory (itself only founded in 1935 thanks to Paul Hindemith), she found herself in a country literally without a ballet tradition. Years later, de Valois would remember, "People regarded my venture as an Arabian Nights tale; in fact, nobody took the matter very seriously but myself."
Until the first decades of this century, apart from occasional performances by visiting ballet companies attended by Levantine merchant princes and a few Europeanized Ottoman aristocrats in Constantinople, ballet was unknown in Turkey. There was no existing art form that encouraged combining ancient Turkish and Anatolian dance and melodic traditions - complex and very much alive among the people yet scorned or ignored by the Ottoman gentry - with what had evolved in Europe as classical ballet.
While the Ottoman court entertained itself with performances of stylized, "civilized" dancing and listened to royal music derived from Byzantine secular and liturgical traditions, the Anatolians were exploring dance in a variety of ways. As an expression of emotions and of social experience, ranging from martial valor to courtship, native dance continued as it had been for centuries, an absolutely essential element in the lives of the men and - despite the injunctions of Islam - the women in Turkey. Then as now, people celebrated with dance all the auspicious moments of life - the sunnet (circumcision), betrothal, marriage, sowing, and harvest. Peasant folk, with restrained or dynamic movements to a marvelously wide range of music, mimicked the sights and the moods of nature. They enacted with ritualized steps the various pursuits of
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