TURKISH NIGHT (A Night of Dance in Turkey):

Turkish night is an event in Turkey and is all about enjoyment, Turkish culture, food, drink, and dance. On this night, you can enjoy customary Turkish dances from different places of Turkey with different varieties of sounds, and also a traditional dinner to understand more about Turkey and its culture. This night is mostly presented by Tour agencies, which are appointed in hotels or on Bosphorus boat trips. This night begins after serving your dinner.  One of the spotlights of this charming night is Belly dancing; you can find many other enjoyable dances like Asuk-masuk, Zeybek dance, Whirling dervishes, fire dance, bar dance, Caucasian dance, and drum show. These dances and shows are an important part of the entertainment.

BELLY DANCING:

Turkish Night Belly Dance is a well-known attraction for visitors, as well as for the local tradition of Turkey. In the Middle Eastern, this dance is known as Orientale Body Dance. In Turkey, it is called Rakaas, and this Rakaas dance is planned according to the best female body characteristics with lift or drop of thighs, shoulder accent, abdominal muscles, and chest movements. These all motions of the dance require big-time abdominal muscle control and capture different body accents with these steps. It is, of course, a difficult dance because you have to just touch and lean the front part of your feet to the ground. Other moments like traveling steps, turns, spins, backbends, and head tosses are used in this beautiful dance to attract Turkish night guests. The arms are used with these steps to create a beautiful body shape. The costume for this pleasing night is a belt that is high up to the waist, with a split skirt, and almost uncovers the full leg. It is a very energetic and cheerful dance just not liked by the visitors but also the local people of Turkey loved it.

ZEYBEK:

Zeybek is a mythic Turkish dance from the Anatolia region of Turkey. There are almost more than 150 zeybek folk dances varying with region and type, slow, fast, solo-man, solo-woman, and couple. The most popular is the solo-man dance, in which the dancers copy the movement of a hawk. At the start, the dancers move in a circle like examining the ground and downtrend and touch the ground. The dancers dance independently, far away from each other. Mostly this dance has two or three dancers, this dance begins with very slow music and ends with fast-scale music, and musical instruments like drums and flutes are used in this Folk Dance.  The costume for this dance is an embroidered cap or helmet, a velvet shirt, and a salwar whose length extends to knee-caps, and an alakye is worn to the waist in which they keep their weapons.

ASUK-MASUK FOLK DANCE:

It is a folk dance that the Turkish people call Asuk-masuk (Belly puppet dance), which is quite different from oriental dance or belly dance. In the Asuk-masuk dance, there is two dancer man; one man dressed up like a man, and the other one dressed up like a woman. Their bodies are painted with male and female faces; their heads are fully covered with clothing, dancing to fast Turkish-style music. As their heads are covered with clothing, faces are painted on their abdomens and their arms are also hidden under this clothing. The arms are above the head, with hands grasping opposite elbows. After some time, these two dancers then performed energetic abdominal rolls to portray the characters kissing. At the end of the show, these dancers then remove their headdress clothing and give a view of their bare face painted chest. The Turkish people also loved this fascinating folk dance as it is a fast music dance.

BAR DANCE:

 The well-known Turkish Bar Dance is in the origin of Eastern Anatolia and is performed by a group of dancers by holding hands, fingers, or shoulders in a row in a large area. A musical instrument like Tabla is used in this fascinating Turkish dance, and the female bar dance presents soft music and has songs in them and the male bar dance presents fast music like drums. There are two terms for this dance, the one is closed-bar in which dancers stand in a shoulder-to-shoulder position, and the second one is open-bar in which dancers are holding their hands but not close to each other.

SPOON FOLK DANCE:

This dance is mostly spread in Konya Anatolia, in which the dancers have two spoons in their hands and dance apart from each other, face-by-face, or sometimes in a circle. The movements of their spoons follow the pattern of music.