The Open Air Theatre at Katara Cultural Village hosted ‘Fire of Anatolia’, with the attendance of the creator and general art director of the project, Mustafa Erdogan’s, from Turkey. The huge theatrical output from Erdogan’s inspiration was presented by nearly 40 dancers to the beats of broadband music from the Black Sea to the Balkans.
The director used many theatrical tools to transmit his concept, such as lights, music and sounds, as well as illuminated pictures accompanied by dancing. With these tools, he epitomized the diversity of Anatolian culture, which is a fusion of West and East.
The dances offer a unique performance with a mixture of Turkish folk heritage ballet, modern and oriental elements and countless motifs of other dance disciplines, with a focus on the selection of appropriate clothing for each scene matching with its signification as though the director wanted to mix history and geography to confirm Turkey’s historical interaction with the rest of its neighbours.
With the rising of the music pattern, the dancers’ dabke (Arab folk dance) escalates and the speed of their movements increases with numerous dance routines and music from each corner of Anatolia, making the audience feel as though they travel through time to live an experience of crisis and war. As the dances continue, the second scene starts preaching the end of war and the beginning of a period of peace, joy and victory.
The dance troupe had the goal to deliver a high value message through its dances: The fire that burned Troy and brought tragedy and ruin to its people lit a candle of hope for the coming peace. This emerged through the illuminated picture that opened the show. It was portrayed by the rumbling of a volcano lava and fire, which had a road crossing it and rising towards the top. On this road, walked a man carrying a torch of hope and peace, as if he wanted to say that hope is born from the womb of pain and that the fire that burns is the same that cleanses the earth and bestows life and light to it.
The dance show was viewed by a large crowd of different nationalities and ages. The attendees expressed their admiration and interacted with applause that followed each scene. The show coincided with the fall of light rains, which fell in a dialogue between war and peace played to the rhythm of life Symphony with all its Vicissitudes.
The ‘The Fire of Anatolia’ has been on display 3,000 times for 20 million audience in a large number of countries, including Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Lebanon, Russia, Hungary, Greece and Bulgaria among others, and it was nominated for the Guinness Book of Records.
Combining the momentum of Anatolian culture, mythology and impressive history of the region with dance, the choreography is fraught with the elements of folk and modern dance. This has been the first dance group to present its folk dance in the Chinese parliament building.
Despite the roaming of Erdogan’s dance group east and west to perform their artistic concert dance, critics have agreed that the ‘Fire of Anatolia’ is considered one of the most famous dance groups in the world and the most literal and skilled.
Mustafa Erdogan founded this dance group in 1999 and it achieved great success in Turkey for three years, which in 2002 encouraged him to set out on a world-wide tour.
At the beginning, Mustafa Erdogan said: “The epic Trojan is old as the stories mentioned in the Bible. The Western civilisation condemns the cultural heritage of the Trojan legend and nothing else. An Anatolian poet had returned this story to human memory, which is believed that its events took place in the year 1180 BC. This story was recorded by Homer — who was born in Izmir — in his immortal books Iliad and the Odyssey, and has taken its place as one of the best-known compositions in the world.”
Mustafa Erdogan was born in Hakkari in 1965, studied in the field of philosophy at the University of Hacettepe and in the area of public management in the Gazi University. His studied in the Bilkent University in 1997 the field of folk dances.
He is credited with establishing dance groups, particularly specialised in local and folkloric dance, in many regions of Turkey.The Peninsula
