Remembering Bora Özkὅk.
Turkey's 4,000 Folkdances. Two weddings.
Kazali, the Shoulder Shaking Dance. Halay.
Kazali, the Shoulder Shaking Dance. Halay.
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| Bora Ozkok 1979. Photo credit: Phantomnet.com |
The Turkish government should give Bora a Medal of Honor for
undoubtedly bringing so many travelers to Turkey – all those 1980’s dancers
from Boston and Mendicino Folkdance Camp in California who signed up for his folk dance tours in the days
before he figured out that you couldn’t make money off folk dancing hippies and switched
to doing tours of Turkey for affluent retirees.
I don’t think any of us at Folklore Village signed up – was it the money,
the idea of a “tour,” or was it that by that time we’d already switched
allegiance to Norwegian pols and Swedish
hambo?
Can we roll back the clock, please? I’d take that tour now! Turkish folk dancing with Bora in TURKEY. That would be heady.
Turkey’s 4000 folk
dances: Instead, I’ve had to do it
my way and 30 years later. With thousands of years of recorded history, criss-crossed
by every possible invading group – Seyjuks, Byzantines, Romans, Mongols,
Turkomen, Ottomen -- Turkey exudes ruins, palaces, forts, mosques, museums. It has plenty of mountains and canyons to that
have kept the various ethnic groups separated. I read that 4,000 separate and distinct folk
dances have been catalogued – which must be more than most all countries of
comparable size – maybe Russia has more?
Nigeria? Poland?
Turkey, 4000: Turkmenistan – zero: 4,000 is a refreshing number after having
found ZERO in Turkmenistan. I know there
were dances – but 70 years of suppression of ethnic cultures, which the Soviets
were so good at, seems to have wiped them out.
And there were apparently no ethnologists roaming the country while they
flourished. So thank god for the ethnogists
of then and now – Mary Barthelemy and Phil Martin and Ada Dziewanowska and Bora
among them – who dedicated years finding, recording, and learning about deep
and amazing local traditions.
So – cut to the chase – it took awhile, but I found
them. Before I came to Turkey, I imagined
I would have to find a small village to dance. But it turns out that you can pretty
much find driving, dynamic Turkish folk dancing every night of the week.
Tourist shows in
Istanbul: In Istanbul on my first
night in Turkey I paid 60 lira ($36, a handsome sum) to attend an
every-other-night tourist performance of folk dancing at a folk arts center. Unlike anyone else that I noticed in the
audience, I sat on the edge of my chair,
with a huge grin on my face. The 20 men and women dancers were tall and
gorgeous There was an 8 piece orchestra
of men who winked and smiled at one another throughout the concert, enjoying
playing together. There were many
costume changes and the dancers’ smiles and flirting felt very real – genuine
love of dance, even though they were obviously doing this same performance several
nights/week. The show included about 30%
belly dancing – I would have preferred less -
all the women could do it and there was one solo male belly dancer – but
at the end of the show, the stage came alive with one dance called Halay. The dancers lined up, joined straight hands
at their sides, shimmied their shoulders, began shouting and I said, “There it
is! Bora!” The dancers’ energy rocked the stage.
A wedding! After that it took me more than a week to
find more folk dancing. When it finally
happened, I was visiting a wonderful woman named Hicran (pron. Hij-ran) in the
southeastern Turkish/Kurdish/Syrian city of Mardin. I’d gotten her name from a SERVAS list – SERVAS is a precursor to couch surfing that I’d learned
about from Witchie Konle. Hicran was a cultural
gold mine as a host – and introduced me to her large, extended family in the
charming village of Mardin. I was
proceeding from house to house of aunts and uncles, playing Jane Farwell games with the kids, when she asked, “Would you
like to go to a wedding tonight?”
A wedding!?! Madeline
in her element.
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| Hicran plays her saz |
Dancing in the moonlight. It was a Syrian wedding – the bride and groom
both spoke Arabic (and Turkish and Kurdish, as people in eastern Turkey do).
But somehow the band was full-on Kurdish so the music was all Halay – a style of dancing done
all over eastern Turkey. People from the
village (Savur) drifted in, rather casually
dressed, to the cement sports ground behind a high school. Even before the bride and groom entered, guests
formed a line to do a simple Turkish step, little fingers joined and circling. First there were 7 women who started it, then
some men added on, then more people – everyone
joining the line in between dancers, as the foot and tail of the line had
special show-off steps in progress. The
end pair were waving scarves and lots of people – men and women - were
ululating. The circle got bigger and
bigger until there were 300 people,
men in modern pants and shirts and women mostly in long skirts and head scarves! No children were dancing (about 30 children
were, however, in that familiar ecstatic, hyperactive state, running in crazed
circles inside and outside the larger circle.)
There was an almost-full moon. It was a high like you get at
the Heilsburger Dreiech (a German folkdance) moment of the Christmas Festival – everyone is in step – old
and young – people grinning till their jaws hurt. I said to myself, “Let me die
now. Life cannot get any better.” Of
course I don’t have a photo of the circle with 300 people – in those best
moments in life, one is participating, not looking on from the outside.
+4+women+GD+(sm).JPG) |
| "Shoulder dance" at Savur wedding - like a snake with palsy |
But I was thinking of you and you were there with me in spirit. Thank you, Bora! The fun thing about the dance is that it
didn’t end! Was it 30 minutes long? 45
minutes long? I started flirting with
the girl singer in the band every time the big circle passed by the stage. Hicran explained to me that “real” live music
of Turkish folk dances has largely disappeared with the advent of the keyboard,
which can imitate so many instruments.
This band had a drummer and two keyboardists, all three of whom belted
out the Kurdish lyrics.
Hicran said with a sigh that if it had been a Syrian band,
there would have been more of the “belly dancing,” hand waving style of dancing. I, for one, was happy with Halay.
The funnest dance
I’ve ever seen. After the first dance, here came dance number two. Lots of people sat down. Hicran beckoned for me to join in and try it. This dance might be called Kazali.
It was one of the most fun dances I’ve ever seen. You stand in a line, grab hands straight at
the side, and start BOUNCING on your toes.
Shoulders start shaking more and more violently. The line looks like a snake with palsy. Then the bouncing feet start
taking little steps to the right in a pattern I couldn’t quite pick up. The leader calls the change (the change calls
were really subtle) and the line goes into step 2, then step 3. I had to drop out – it was fascinating, more
like a way of BREATHING. I took a little
video in the dark shadows – especially from the back, shoulders were shaking so
much they look like they’re going to break off the body. I loved it!
Lines broke apart and soon there wereshorte lines of men, and lines of
women, gyrating around the big open space.
Like the first dance, it went on forever – another 30
mintues? The three musicians were in a
frenzy and the song they were singing seemed to have 40 verses with a chorus
between each.
After that, dancers sat down, gasping for breath, and the
bride and groom entered though a quickly-formed aisle of spewing fountains of fireworks, with
other fireworks raining from the skies. The children were wide- eyed and
breathless. The bridal pair stopped at the
head of the courtyard and then guests came up and pinned money to ribbons that
had been draped around their necks. The
person’s name and amount they were giving were announced. Hicran had previously told me that the two of
us must each give 100 lira ($60) – so this wasn’t a “free” night for me by any
means. In Kurdish the announcer said,
“Madeline of America gives 100 dollars.”
(They call lira “dollars”). There
were merely smiles – no cheers or applause.
Dressing women in gold. Hicran said 50 lira is the smallest amount
it’s appropriate to give. Family members
and close friends go to the jewelers and buy gold jewelry to pin onto the
ribbons. As you can guess, real gold jewelry -- necklaces, bracelets, earrings
-- start at about $300 per piece. I was
surprised that in the 21st Century, in a modern country like Turkey,
people were still draping their women in gold jewelry. I’ll have to find out if
this is Kurdish, Syrian, or if it’s done all over Turkey. Certainly it is true that every other store in
the whole country seems to be a jewelry store, with a dazzling array of ornate
gold displayed in the windows.
.JPG) |
| Pinning money on bride & groom |
Suddenly Hicran announced it was late and we had a
long way to drive home. “Will the
dancing continue?” I asked, dismayed. “Oh, yes!” she replied. “The village people who live here will dance
until sunrise.”
It took a steel will of mature politeness to be a gracious
guest and exit with Hicran’s family.
But, I asked myself, how much happier could I be? I’d danced Turkish dancing in context – not
in a workshop but at a real wedding in a picturesque village beneath a full
moon!
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| Madeline, Hassan & Ahmet, Turkish breakfast |
Wedding Number Two. One night later, I was at it again. I have to digress here and say that men
notice me in Turkey. Ever since I turned
50 I’ve officially “given up” chasing men, and I notice in reciprocity that the
average male in Wisconsin, Sweden, Germany, Turkmenistan, and Lesotho, doesn’t
even see me when I pass. It’s like I’ve
become invisible. For a woman, it’s actually kind of a relief.
But from the minute the plane landed in Turkey, handsome men
ages 28 to 88 were propositioning me – especially at the tourist sites, where I
surmise there are droves of wolves who thrive on one-night stands with
tourists. Unlike younger female
tourists, who were annoyed by the attention, I was both shocked and flattered. I lied outrageously about my age, subtracting
10 to 20 years, and I heard that maddening familiar rejoinder men ask when you
tell them a firm “No!”to their propositions:
“Why not?” A question I hadn’t heard in years.
Land of propositions.
That digression is necessary to
explain why, in the city of Diyabakir, Kurdish PKK stronghold of southeastern
Turkey, I had a “date” late one night with a guy named Hassan. He’d been lurking around the hotel desk when
I checked in earlier in the morning, and told me I should come have some free
coffee in the old palace where he worked.
“Maybe” I answered mistrustfully.
Or, would I like him to be a guide for the day – no money – just for the
company? It was his day off. “No.” I answered more firmly. He looked genuinely disappointed, which
surprised me for some reason. So I
counter-bargained. “Can you find me some
Halay dancing?” “Sure!” he answered, to
my surprise. “But it won’t start till 9 pm.”
“Hmmm”, I muttered to myself. “What
kind of pick-up line might this be?”
So I trapsed around Diyabakir by myself all day. It was hot and I was lost half the time and remembered
how I hate being a tourist, looking for famous buildings. So by dinner I relented, glad Hassan had
given me his cell phone number. He
turned up at the hotel in minutes, and scolded me for all the sites I hadn’t
found. “Where are we going now?” I asked.
“To dinner,” he answered, “then to a wedding.”
So there I was again, Madeline in her element. It was a Monday night but a couple of Zaza ethnic heritage were getting married in a wedding hall, which, Hassan explained, is
rented by families for a wedding EVERY NIGHT of the week. When we showed up uninvited at the door –
Hassan wearing a just a T-shirt – the host whispered demurely that this was a
private function. Hassan pointed his
thumb at me, “She’s a tourist.” “Oh!”exclaimed
the host. “You are very welcome! Please come in.”
He ushered us in, seated us at a table, and began bringing food and
drinks (no alcohol in this Muslim setting).
I could hear the word “tourist” being whispered around the room, and a
series of women came up to me to say “Hoş
geldiniz” (welcome) and ask my name.
A fun tourist indeed! Then the dancing started, the little
finger dance again, and I got up, dragging Hassan with me. The crowd broke into big smiles. A fun tourist indeed! Again, the first dance went on for ½ hour,
and soon almost everyone was on the floor, not 300 people this time – but maybe
75. I guess it’s their version of “grand
march.” After it was over, lots of
people sat down and the more difficult dances started. The young Turks flew across the floor, like
we used to do, to join the line. I saw
the shoulder dance again, and a cool peek –a-boo couple dance.
.JPG) |
| My camera blurs the candle ceremony around the bridal pair |
No photos of magic. Since this was indoors, there were no
fireworks when the bride and groom entered, but instead a circle of girls,
holding plates of candles, danced around the seated bridal pair. At that magical moment, my poor camera battery,
full of videos from the first wedding, chose to die. So again, no good photos of the remarkable
moment.
This time I gave only 50 lira
($30) – it’s clear I couldn’t afford to go to a wedding every night – pushing the
bills into the bride’s hands, which were barely visible beneath her gold glittered
red veil that covered her whole face. But
I was thrilled again to see dances in a cultural context. More men than women are dance enthusiasts
here, and many elderly men dance with skill and pride.
In both weddings, the leader of the dance line kept
changing. It was always a guy who wanted
to show off. Sometimes men and women got
so carried away they’d break into the middle of the circle to do solo steps, or
steps in pairs, and then the circle would unlink hands and start clapping, all
the while continuing with their feet to circle the floor.
As before, kids ran in excited circles. No one scolded them or told them to calm down
or encouraged them to dance. They were
like a little ethnic tribe of their own.
One boy who looked about 11 was clearly trying to pick up the men’s
dance steps, facing them in the circle (rather than behind them).
Hassan explained that villages and cities all have such
wedding halls, and all I have to do is show up and say I’m a tourist and I’d be
welcome. Who would have guessed? There are also places called “Halay bars”
where people go to drink alcohol and dance Halay – and there are recreational
and serious dance groups that have weekly dance practices, if you find the
right crowd.
Halay music
everywhere. After those two
weddings, I heard Halay music everywhere.
Hicran told me that it re-surged after the 1980’s, when Kurds and
activist anti-government Turks were jailed by the thousands. With Turkey’s Kurdish population 20%, and
more like 60-70% in eastern cities and villages, the ever-present Kurdish songs
and dance music run like a vein of protest and political strength. I love hearing the music in the tea shops, on
buses, on the street. When I hear that
it’s a Halay dance playing, I pantomime holding up little fingers, and the
person whose eye I’ve caught grins and jumps up to join hands with me for an
impromptu little dance step.
With this gesture, I got the crew of the ferry to show me
the shoulder dance, and sparked dancing on the ferryboat deck with school boy
passengers. Someone always has Halay music
on his MP3 player, and Turks will dance at the drop of a hat. Fun!
The non-folkdancers among us left this letter long ago.
So to you folk dancers out there – greetings from the land of the Turks. Find your local Kurdish refugee group, say
“Halay”, pantomime the little finger hold, and you’ll be 20 years old again!
Love, Madeline
.JPG) |
| Learning Syrian folkdance from Hicran's nieces in Mardin |
Last comments –To see some great You Tube videos, type in names of specific dances that Bora taught: Delilo, Ali Pasha. Güzelleme,
Halay, İşte Hende, etc.
· Bora has a nice bio at:
· Anyone have his e-mail or Barbara Shipley’s?
· Anyone have photos of us doing Turkish dances in the 1980’s?
·
And who can forget the dynamic Turks at Leiden!
This letter was originally sent on July 7, 2012, not as one of my
Public Letters, but just to a few folk dancing friends.
[1]
Anne B., Doug C., David & Suzi G., the Johnson sisters - Jodi, Marli,
Kelti, and Derry, as well as Doug C., Bob W., Steve's P. and S., Taylor E., Joan
& Suzy E., Scott S., Phil M., Eric S., Paula H., Mary B., Dick A., Louise
N., and to the memories of Vicki A. and Dodie C., and to all the other Folklore
Village Turkish dance enthusiasts of that era.
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~ Madeline