Kiraze

As most of the belly dancers/dance fans can easily name at least dozen Egyptian dancers but only a few can name any Turkish dancers I thought it would be nice to know at least some of the most famous dancers.

I added a bunch of photos to Gallery - these include many Turkish dance stars from time between 50´s to current date. Some costumes (or lack of them) can be questionable, but as there are not too many pictures available of these dancers and this costuming also reflects some time period in Turkish dancing, I thought that it is still Ok to include these.

List of names is quite long and not all of them are "big stars" but at least they all have had or still have some fame either on TV or nightclubs. Also the spelling of name can differ a bit of the correct one as I do not use full Turkish set of alphabet.

But dancers are: Asena, Asu Han, Aysel Tanju, Birgül Beray, Birsen Ayda, Burcin Orhon, Didem, Elcin, Eylül, Gamze Öz, Gülnihal, Hale Sultan, Hülya Babus, Leila Adali, Leyla Sayar, Melike, Mezdeke, Mine Mutlu, Nejla Ates, Nesrin Topkapi, Nurhayat, Özel Türkbas, Oya Man, Prenses Banu, Sabine Sevan, Seher Seniz, Sema Yildiz, Sibel Baris, Sibel Can, Sibel Gökce, Sivga, Tanyeli, Tülay Karaca & Zümre

Of some of these dancers I can find some info, but many of them are more or less unknown also to me

Sara

Cheers! I'm really interested in Turkish style and have been looking for DVD's for it etc, unfortunately I haven't been sucessful.

It was nice to see some different Turkish dancers cause I only knew about three or four.

Salome

Artemis has a Turkish Oryantal DVD out, I think her url is www.serpentine.org also Eva Cernik has video's of Turkish dancers performing and we just got an instructional in from WDNY called I love Turkish Bellydance.

Kiraze

Sara, in UK you can get some Turkish DVD:s/VCD:s from Hilary Thacker - she has quite good selection of those few DVD:s/VCD:s that are available about Turkish dancers... unfortunately the quality of dancing/camerawork in those is not very good as in Turkey people have not yet realized there is lots of interest on belly dance outside their borders Anyway, some dancers worth watching on these are Özel Türkbas, Prenses Banu and Tülay Karaca and also Burcin Orhon, Firuze Sultan, Sibel Gökce and Nergis have some decent dances... most of the others are more or less bad and remember that they do not present Turkish dancing at its best as these videos are mostly aimed to some soft porn market and not for dance enthusiasts

In Germany you can find these same DVD:s/VCD:s at several Turkish book- and musicstores but also Canzone carries some titles.

In USA good place to find these is Tulumba - and as Salome said Eva Cernik has some excellent dance footage from Turkey but unfortunately only on VHS. Her own dancing is also a good example of Turkish style as is anything by Artemis Mourat or Mishaal (from Japan)

Sara

Cheers for the advice, I might order those Dvd's off Hilary.

I've loked at that Sarah Skinner one but I'm not really sure about it. Has anyone else seen it or used it?

Kiraze

I think this Sarah´s "I love Turkish BD" is badly mistitled so if someone wants to learn real Turkish dance from it she´ll be either disappointed or mislead but if warned in advance there is lots of good in it - so this DVD includes good quality teaching, absolutely marvellous costumes on performances, nice chat about costume creation, dance choreography teaching that does not have anything to do with real Turkish dancing but is fun, fantasy-gypsy dancing with a skirt to well-known Turkish tunes Rompi rompi and Mastika (and even though these tunes belong to category "must know" I would rather see some other music to be used in Turkish-influenced dance as these are already heard million times)... dances are however easy, lively and include some really useful ideas to fantasy dancing and Sarah is a beautiful dancer and a good teacher.

Absolutely bad in this DVD was the selection of performance music and style: there is Arabic music in semi-classical arab-andalucian style which is even further apart from Turkish dance than the teaching part and I found the selection of music really inappropriate as there would have been millions of Turkish songs to perform to and to demonstrate that Sarah really "loves Turkish BD"

Kiraze

Because of some requests I removed most of these pictures from the gallery - I left there only those which do not show too much leg or breasts and pics of current dancers .

I do understand that gallery was perhaps too open place for some of these pictures and I should have added some more information to tell about the background of each dancer and the era of dance they represented, but I am still a bit disappointed that dance community does not seem to be ready to accept that these pictures represented an important part of the Turkish dance history: history which in all cases not has been so good dancewise or nice or whatever but despite their costumes dancers like Prenses Banu, Özel Türkbas, Nejla Ates, Sabine Sevan and even Sibel Baris were good dancers and are worth knowing.

And to some of the comments: yes, some of these ladies did try to represent stereotypical image of belly dancer as do most of the dancers who wear bedlah - did their poses differ of those seen by many Egyptian or western dancers? No they did not... Ok, Zümre has been "a bad apple" in Turkish dance and her picture was awful as was a picture of Leila Adali, but despite their very "nude" costumes pictures of Prenses Banu and Nejla Ates IMO were still beautiful and I could not see anything wrong with picture of Sibel Gökce (except she had too much makeup)

and yes, in Turkey dancers are often seen as prostitutes and some of the pictures unfortunately have strengthen that image, but again this should not have been anything new... even today dancers are seen as prostitutes or equal in most of Middle East - only few dancers have ever managed there to rise above that image and even some current famous dancers (like Zümre in Turkey or Dina in Egypt) do their worst to keep this image stong

Perhaps I will add later some of those pics here in the midst of discussion so they can be better explained. I am sorry if I offended you folks

chryssanthi sahar

Dear Kiraze.

All of this was definitely not obvious in the photo gallery. And don't forget, that there are many people who visit the gallery but don't read the threads and the discussions. So what a newbie who just visits the gallery would think about belly dancers, if most the of the stars that are shown there are with naked breasts and in obviously sleazy poses? I think you can put those pictures in this thread, because here they are embedded in a context, but in the gallery they get a completely different meaning.

They definitely did! Especially the terrible picture of Leila Adali. But I wouldn't put pictures of ANY dancer, doesn't matter from what country, who pose like this, in the gallery.

Do we have to overtake and strengthen this image? If Turks and Arabs consider dancers to be prostitutes, do we have to confirm this and go on presenting dancers as prostitutes? What they think in repressive Islamic societies about this dance and the women who present them in publicity is irrelevant for us in the Western countries. We are fighting to bring the dance away from this sleazy, oversexed image, therefore we should be careful, what WE present in publicity. As I allready said, such pictures in a thread where the Turkish style is discussed are o.k., but the gallery is a very public thing, so we should really be careful what kind of pics we put there, because this is our label for the world outside the belly dance community. I know that you meant it well, but thank you for removing the pics from the gallery.

__________________
Oriental dancer and instructor of Greek origin, living in Germany
www.chryssanthi.com

slinks

Wow !! very strong feelings here, I didn't see these pics, I don't go into the gallery, I find it too mumbo jumbo to sort through ... Kiraze, I think I know the VCDs that you are talking about !! I ordered a couple of so called Turkish dancers performances last year .. disco lights, smoke machine, outrageous costumes and the first thing that came to my mind was Porno Girls !!! they went in the bin.. I didn't care what I paid for them they were out !!! lol

Kiraze

Ok, I already admitted the gallery was a wrong place but anyway the only dancers with naked breasts of those pictures were of Zümre and Burcin Orhon (and even they both covered their breasts with hands or veil, surprisingly nobody commented of Burcin´s nakedness) - even Sibel Baris, Prenses Banu and Nejla Ates had at least some pasties to cover their breasts which in my eyes is not any worse than current "exploding breasts" trend in Egypt.

And of poses how to determine what is sleazy: that awful picture of Leila Adali was not a pose (as I said before I admit that pic was awful) but some unfortunate shot taken during her show where she seems to be just getting up from floorwork but as it has been the only dance picture of her I have managed to find I still though that if I want to list the most famous Turkish dancers from latest 3 decades I still should include her as her name is still quite well known

Here is one clip of her dancing... well, she is not the best Turkish dancer there is and for sure she represents "lack of costume" style, but if she would have a skirt this would not be that bad as she still has some nice moves that are typical for Turkish style


And of other dancers who received negative comments I agree that pic of Sibel Baris was also questionable so I should have selected something else but Pictures of Banu and Nejla IMO are not sleazy at all despite their pasties as was not Sibel Gökce who also received these "Yack"-comments - so please tell me what is wrong with this picture so I can know what is though to be offensive before I add any more pictures?