Folk dancing at the Turkish Festival

Watch the audio slideshow by Lydia here and read the story by Rachael below:

Their instructor danced along from in front of the stage, skipping along in her red dance slippers and traditional blue headscarf, watching and smiling intently as the troupe of 9- and 10-year old Turkish-American children performed Kastamanu and the other folk dances they had been practicing for months.

It was clearly a moment of triumph for the Turkish Folk Dance Children’s Troupe as the crowd of over a thousand danced along and cheered loudly.

The dancers backstage attracted a lot of attention for their colorful costumes.

Selin Suboybeyi, 10, is a member of the Turkish Folk Dance Children’s Troupe and has been dancing for three years. She said loves the folk dances.

“You do it with feeling,” she said. “It’s really fun when you do the turns and stuff. When you do it all together…it looks really nice.”

One of the dancer’s mothers, Esra Tercan, spoke of the sense of community the troupe created.

“It’s become a family. They’ve enjoyed each other and they enjoy the music,” she said. “It’s a great way to keep the culture and the language and the traditions together.”

FOMGET, a folk dance troupe based in Ankara, Turkey, elicited cheers from the audience with their international award-winning routine, involving, most popularly, swords.

The Nomad Dancers, under the direction of Adriane Whalen, also performed.

At the festival they performed an Azeri folk dance, but they do dances from up and down the Silk Road, said Whalen. “We do a lot of Persian. We do Uzbek. We do Tajik. We have Afghani dances. We do a lot of Indian Bollywood.”

FOMGET, a dance troupe from Turkey, has won a folk dancing world championship.

Many of the dances told stories.

“We’re doing a dance from a very mountainous region,” said Lauren McGaughy, another performer. “It’s based on what a goat looks like when it’s trying to walk through the mountains. It’s a lot of skipping and jumping and hopping. It looks very simple but actually the foot movements can be very complicated.”

“What is the Turkish culture?” asked Ata Istor of the American Turkish Association of Washington, D.C.“Food. Our flag. Our hospitality.”

And after watching an afternoon of traditional folk performances, dancing definitely fits in there, too.