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We
are searching for the silhouette of the first dance, danced
in the land where humanity authored its first expressions of
every kind. We are trackers of a sort. We are just now
coming to the fork in a road we have traveled thousands of
times. It as though the ground we tread speaks, stretching
from the Aegean where thousand year-old olive trees bloom to
the immortal mountain of Mesopotamia. Anatolia is our
guide…
She
guides us movement by movement, note by note and rhythm by
rhythm… And She still lives because She embodies the dance
of every emotion.
Dance
is said to be the art of our age. Perhaps because it was
also the art form of choice in ages past. To reinforce this
assertion, to set it on a solid foundation of stone, 100
passionate hearts came together and beat as one, giving off
the brilliance of 100 separate sparks, and now in
syncopation walk side-by-side with decisiveness. There is no
doubt but that we are still at the beginning of our journey.
After 5,000 years, what is one more year for Anatolia…
To
create our own revolution of the body there is, thankfully,
no need to consult stone reliefs or steles. Because all that
they depict still lives on in our dances. This, our sacred
inheritance, worked with the painstaking care of a
goldsmith, is our testament to a tradition and culture that
has endured for five millennia. The beat of tens of drums
pounds out a rhythm unique to our lands in salute to a rich
and varied production of art and culture that it is our aim
to celebrate in a spirit of respect and friendship. Our
subject is all goods and all evils. Light and dark, good and
evil have "for centuries despoiled and rent with the
iron hooves of fearsome cavalry" our land, which has
nonetheless remained proud and unbowed, has "cared
nothing for Alexander the Great or Sultan Murat" and to
this we pay tribute. In her time, the mother goddess Cybele
has exhausted a hundred Dionysiuses, cradled Noah, presided
over the land that bore Adam and Eve, and now, with a warmth
and expressiveness worthy of Cybele herself, we would like
to open for you the enchanted doors of a new Anatolia in a
new age, an Anatolia that preserves its rich fusion of
cultures and welds them into something that at once
expresses and transcends our time.
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