Tuesday, June 9

Maren's class celebrated the end of the year with a picnic lunch at the park near their school today, and I am happy to report that there was no sunburn afterward. But today was a hot one!

Yesterday on the way home from school I saw a poster on the bus advertising a Turkish dancing performance. I snapped a photo of it to show at work and ask if it was worth going to; no one knew anything about it. So I loaded up the girls in a taxi and we went to find out if it was worth attending!

The show was at the Kocatepe Kultur Merkezi (Kocatepe is the biggest mosque in Ankara, over in Kizilay), and our taxi driver dropped us off right in front of the building so we didn't have any trouble finding it. The show was scheduled to start at 7:30, and we arrived at 6:50 since the traffic was light and we didn't have to use up any time wandering around trying to find where we were supposed to be. I asked a guard where to buy a ticket and he pointed up the stairs...no tickets needed, we just walked into the auditorium. So far, so good! The place was already packed, so we ended up in three seats in the second to the last row and plopped ourselves down to wait for the show to start. It was hot in there. Really hot. Maren's cheeks were all rosy and we were all sweating and I was wondering how long we would be able to stay.

The auditorium filled up even more, to the point that there were people sitting on laps of people who were sitting on the aisle stairways. I'm not sure we could have left even if we wanted to.

The show was wonderful and exactly what I had been wanting to see while here in Turkey. It was a recital of sorts for the dancers of all ages who have been studying traditional Turkish dancing. I have many little video clips to share, and some photos also. Lacey was excited to see some clogging and ballet similarities and I was excited to see their colorful costumes with motifs reminding me of African fabrics, Asian designs, and Russian dancing. It was clear that Turkey really is in the middle of all these cultures and this part of the world.

I think we were the only non-Turks in the entire audience full of friends and family members of the performers. It was perfect in the same way that the fiddling concert in Prince Edward Island was so authentic--it was definitely not produced to be a stage show and was clearly showing more of an "everyday life" art than a Hollywood art. I appreciated that aspect of it tremendously.

Each piece had a nice long introduction in Turkish and I found myself really wishing I could understand it so the dances made a little more sense. Lacey didn't enjoy the loud volume of the bagpipe-like horn in some of the pieces, so unfortunately she sat with her ears covered, but the dancing was still fun to watch. Maren was hot and tired, but she stayed put and didn't whine too much.

Some pictures:



























I knew I wouldn't be seeing many minarets out of theatre windows once we come home...so some shots before and after the show of Kocatepe were in order.