The Fire of Anatolia (Sultans of the Dance) or Anadolu Ateşi is a Turkish dance group consisting of 120 dancers, several choreographers and other technical staff. The group has performed in more than 60 countries from the USA to China and Japan, in front of an audience of approximately 10 million people altogether. Fire of Anatolia holds two Guinness records, one for fastest dance performance with 241 steps per minute and another for largest audience, 400 000 people in Ereğli, in the Black Sea region of the country. The head of the group is Mustafa Erdoğan.
The group had its first performances in 2001 and started a world tour a year later, already under the name Fire of Anatolia. They later used the name “Sultans of the dance” as well for the reason of ease of being rememberedI think.
Anatolia or Asia Minor, is the land where Turkey is now. Actually it is the part including the entire country except the part in Europe, and the part of Istanbul belonging to Europe. Anatolia has been the center of many civilizations such as such as the Hittites, Phrygians, and Lydians, and Achaemenid, Greek, Armenian, Roman, Byzantine, Anatolian Seljuk and Ottoman states. It was a long dream of the producer Erdogan and it is a great idea and a dream come true for all our earthlings to come up with a dance group expressing the rhytm of this old land of the earth.
The programs they currently perform are named Fire of Anatolia and Dawool, the latter of which is “built on rhythm. It begins with a religious scene, then a romantic duet and continues with drum sessions.
“We wanted to reflect Istanbul with it, its multiculturalism, the mixture of cultures and religions” says Oktay Keresteci, the ballet coreographer.
The Fire of Anatolia also known as Sultans of the Dance are performing at Eurovision 2004 Song Contest Turkey. It starts with belly dance and ends with a folk dance which called “horon” from the black sea region of Turkey.
Another performance
Rehersal: 218 steps per minute. Later on, they will do the 241 steps per minute and have the Guiness World Record.
Another performance of this Northern Turkey’s dance “horon”
Sultans of the dance’s performance in Eurovision 2004 @ Istanbul
Full version captured from a German TV
I will put more videos very soon.
This post is dedicated to hospitable, genereous and emotional people of my home land Turkey who belong to the cultures of Mediterranean, Balkan, Caucasian, Middle East, and Europe.
