Places, Dancers, Preparations and Reasons for the Performance of Folk Dances
Folk dances are performed at weddings, engagement ceremonies,
when sending young men off to perform their military service, at
national and religious festivals, after victories, going to and coming
back from from the high plateaus and at meetings such as ferfene, yaren
talks, barana or sira gezmesi.
Dances are generally performed in all suitable open areas, but may also be performed in close areas as well.
People who enjoy reputations as good folk dancers are especially
invited to wedding ceremonies. These are respectable people who have
knowledge of that region's music and folk dances. Folk dances owe their
rich variety of moves to such people, who happily improvise while
performing in order to show off their skills. In this way, dances are
successfully passed on to people who may or may not be capable of
dancing themselves, especially the young ones.
Folk Dance Traditions, Beliefs, Legends and Stories
Some dances reflect natural events or daily life, and others treat
social events and matters of the heart. For example, the Kimil dance
from Urfa province portrays a kind of pest that harms the crops and the
way that villagers attempt to deal with it. Other dances refer to other
stories.
Costumes, Instruments and Names of Folk Dances
Folk Dance Names, Instruments and Costumes
People wear daily or special costumes in line with the reasons behind
the particular dance. Please visit the costume and finery section of
this site for further information.
In Turkey folk dance is invariably accompanied by musical instruments.
(Please refer to the music section) In some regions, women perform also
folk dances to the accompaniment of folk songs.
Folk dances are named after their creators, geographic regions, or the natural events or stories they relate.
Folk Dances By Subject Matter
Folk dances may be divided into those that describe the
relationship between man and nature, those that deal with rain, mist
and rivers, those that describe plants, those that are defined as
numbers, those that describe the relationship between man and animals
and those that take social events such as fighting, war, love and
courtship as their subject matter. Then there are those that reflect
the ceremonies performed when a young man is about to go off to do his
military service. There are dances about agriculture, the harvest and
damaged crops. Other dances describe different occupations, such as
shepherds. Men can perform dances that mirror the everyday lives of
women. Then there are dances that describe daily tasks such as baking
bread and milking, and others that describe a production procedure such
as spinning yarn.
Different types of group dances in different regions
There are many different types of folk dances performed in
various ways in Turkey, and these reflect the cultural structure of
each region. The bar in Erzurum province, the halay in the East and
Southeast, the hora in Thrace, the horon in the Black Sea and spoon
dances in and around Konya are the best known examples of these.
Adapting Folk Dances
Folk dances eventually moved away their natural environment
and became an art form of their own by means of contests and festivals.
Arrangements are being made to adapt these dances to the stage.
