Alaturka Dance and Music Festival in Istanbul, September 4th -12th 2005
By Alison Smith
On my first visit to Turkey I fell in love with Turkish music, and subsequently took up the violin as an adult. So you can imagine that a trip to Istanbul that involved belly dancing and music was my dream holiday. Here is an account of the event which took place in early September 2005.

With around 50 attendees from the USA, Japan, Mexico, Columbia, Greece, France, plus myself as the sole UK attendee, this was definitely an international event, and although I had travelled out on my own I never felt neglected or lonely everyone was really friendly, and anyway we were too busy for such feelings to occur.

The week started on Sunday evening with a welcome party with "our musicians" in the Yasmak Sultan Hotel. These were quality musicians, and I was completely fascinated with all the instruments, especially the kanun, as the players hands were just a blur as he plucked strings and flicked switches.

After a wonderful buffet breakfast on the hotel rooftop overlooking the Hagia Sophia, our first day (Monday) was allocated to tasks such as changing money and buying costumes. Considering that many people had experienced long flights and jet lag this was probably a good idea. In the evening we went to a Hamam (a privately engaged, very old Turkish bathhouse), where our band played, and we danced and smoked the hubble bubble pipe. Our sauna and massage, was done by men surprisingly.

Our dance classes started on Tuesday morning and straight away Artemis was teaching us the Turkish Karsilama 9/8 rhythm that was going to dominate the whole weeks proceedings. Instead of thinking of this as three lots of 123, it is counted as 12 12 12 123, which to the western ear sounds asymmetrical, but by the end of the week it felt normal to me, like a count of 4 with an extra beat in it. Turkish music is famous for these complicated rhythms that we think of as unbalanced, but they are useful for stepping, hopping and turning at the end of phrase, so once you get used to them, you really like them. Tayyar Akdeniz, a well known and respected Turkish folk dancer and drummer taught us more complicated steps to the karsilama rhythm in the afternoon. By this stage, I was attending 3 out of 4 hours of classes every day, and trying to pace myself for the rest of the week, so had not attended any classes given by Nourhan Sharif (unbelievable!) but those who did, reported that they enjoyed the Egyptian choreography and Cuban steps. My priority was to learn about Turkish music, and going to Egyptian classes at this stage would have confused me.We had a lively evening at an outdoor fish restaurant serenaded and entertained by Romany musicians and dancers, and summed up by our waiter, who trapped in amongst all these dancing women muttered to himself, "Oh Allah, this is GOOD."

The following day, Wednesday, Semra Su, a well known Turkish belly dancer, led us through some Turkish Oriental and Turkish Romany steps, but when even Semra had to be reminded that we were meant to be studying Oriental and not just Romany, I was coming to the conclusion that the Romany rhythms were more natural for the Turks to listen to. That evening our teachers Artemis, Nourhan and Eva gave energetic performances at a Casino Cabaret, along with Delilah and the famous Turkish dancer Birgul who included a comedy number in her show. Before that we had watched a fantastic display of folk dancing from Turkey and neighbouring countries, followed by the cheesiest cabaret singer ever, who sang a song for each of the nationalities present that evening. What were they going to sing for England? It wasn't too bad, "Let It Be" by The Beatles. When I recounted this tale to friends at home, who pointed out that I'm from Scotland, I reminded them it could have been "Donald, Where's Your Troosers", so it was better to just "Let It Be". And thankfully England didn't have to enter the "Belly dancer of the World" competition, which was won by Miss USA and Miss Greece (Miasia and Athena, both of whom were in our group!).

By now it was Thursday, although I didn't know what day of the week it was anymore, nor what was happening in the outside world. I attended a folk dance class with Tayyar (more complicated Romany steps and gestures including pretending to wash clothes) and Turkish Romany with Artemis. All our classes contained a lot of information, in fact they were like master classes. That day I had skipped a couple of classes to visit the Istanbul Museum of Archaeology, which given the Greek, Roman and Ottoman heritage of this area was absolutely stunning. Even the little outdoor cafe was stuffed with ancient statues - it was almost as if they had run out of space in the museum. In the evening we had a boat trip, up and down the Golden Horn, which splits the European part of Istanbul into two. We never made it across the Bosphorous to Asia. Everyone was up dancing to our musicians, including all the quiet people like me, and this was one of the most enjoyable evenings (perhaps I was developing a taste for their national alcoholic beverage, Raki).

By Friday, people were beginning to flag (although my strategy of pacing myself was paying off). The morning was set aside for visiting the Topkapi Palace (including the Harem, which made me think I would never want to go back in time) and the Grand Bazaar. That afternoon, we had a class with Rayhan, a real Romany dancer (more clothes washing gestures, these Romanies are a clean lot), and zills with Artemis (the first of three zills classes in the program, which I had been pacing myself for) and naturally we did the karsilama rhythm, hurray! Friday evening was free time for us, but most of us were so tired that we had an early night, and were tucked up in bed before midnight.

On Saturday morning it was zills with Tayyar, meaning complicated versions of the Karsilama, and our first workshop with Eva Cernik, who did a more thorough breakdown of what we had done the previous day with Rayhan. There was more free time on Saturday afternoon for sightseeing and shopping, then we had our Goodbye Party that evening (although it was our second to the last evening) and a number of students and most of the teachers danced to our live band. All the dancers were great, and of course had their own style. We had two classes with Eva on Sunday, zills (but this time really treating them as a musical instrument by changing the tone at various parts of the karsilama rhythm) and a class in Turkish Oriental, where we learned some really useful steps to the ciftitelli rhythm. In between these two, Artemis gave a workshop on Taksim, which in my opinion was her best. As we improvised we had to think of concepts such as colours, feelings or textures and dance to these. Although this sounds bizarre, it was really effective.

Later that day we attended a Sufi show, which given the significance of the date, September 11th, had a special poignancy. It seemed appropriate that after the ritual, we all met in the courtyard of the tekke. We decided to all hold hands and we silently reflected on the love, tolerance and respect required between all nationalities and cultures in these times, but which we had all experienced in Turkey. We had all had a brilliant time. The teachers were giving, the organization was exceptional and everyone was great fun, especially the Japanese contingent has been worked hard and played hard.

The following morning we said our goodbyes and scattered in various directions, but as my flight was not until late in the afternoon, I had a last chance to dash round Istanbul. I visited a mosque, made my own private prayers, then later walking through the streets and listening to the three nearby mosque's midday call to prayer which had punctuated our days in Istanbul, I reflected that I would miss all of this when back in the UK. My last shopping stint was a trip to the Spice Bazaar, to stock up on coffee, various teas and spices. Under great pressure I succumbed to the insistent shopkeeper and did finally buy something called "Love Tea". "Come back to Istanbul", he said, "and let me know how you get on with the Love Tea". I'm sure I'll be back.