Authenticity killed the Fat

Şahin Yaldız

You would understand better if you watched the video first! 

Authentic costumes of villagers from Muğla province of Turkey.

Zeibek is an improvised single dance of Western Anatolia. The dance is known as the dance of the bandits. However, with the foundation of the Republic of Turkey, the dance was declared as ‘the national dance of the new Turkish society’. Influenced by the movements of ballet, the dance was restructured into a new dance that has nothing to do with the authentic one. This ‘invented’ dance is still more popular over its original form. Moreover; due to the economical and sociological changes, the dance began to lose its richness and authenticity in its natural environment: Western Anatolia villages. Although there has not been a thorough documentation project on the zeibek dances of the villages one by one. 

 

I am the prince of myself!

The Turkish youth is still learning the modern form of the dance because the search for the original form requires time and energy. As a result, a group of young scholars created a project named ‘Academical Zeibek Villages’ initiated by me. The conditions for a zeibek ceremony are provided by me and my friends and the whole village reanimates the old tradition of zeibek dances in its original form. The one week taking ceremonies in remote and unknown villages are led by the villagers who witnessed the authentic tradition. As the first and unique way of transmitting and documenting the dance in a dying tradition, the project attracts dozens of students and academicians who want to experience the authenticity and transmit the dance accordingly.

The shared heritage of Anatolia. In that particular dance scene I tell the story of a Muse trying to inspire a famous Turkish traditional musician Hayri Dev

Up to here that is a boring basic introduction. So, my own story begins after that.

I grew up with the myths and stories about some unbelievably courageous people who were robbing the rich and giving what they have robbed to the poor. They were the sons of the mountain. They were suspicious about even the wind. They were the prince of themselves. They were Zeibeks. Nobody knows where they came from, why they were so successful on their Robin Hood like warfare. Some said that they were the last remnants of an indigenous Anatolian warrior tribe who were living in the secret mountains of western Asia Minor, some said they were a tribe who were living in the ships on Aegean Sea, some claimed that they are just a bunch of bastards. We, as the people called them just Zeibeks.

When I think of bloody Zeibeks

The unique dance of these bandits is so impressive that the image of villagers dancing that unique dance having the same name Zeibek(Zeybek) settled in my memory in my childhood. So, I began to practice it. I mastered in the dance in fifteen years. I’ve written lots of dance theatres, complex choreographies, many stories on zeibeks, performed solo performances in this fifteen year. I also founded Turkey’s biggest university folk dance club and taught them for 6 years. This gave me great joy but there is something unique with that I’m most proud of myself: Academic Zeibek Villages.

One morning, I took a walk in the village while everybody was still sleeping.
This guy screamed: You fat guy! We love you so much! Come and have a
morning coffee!

 We always teach the dance with the figures that we learned from other instructors. Nobody in Turkey was seeking the authentic form of the dance. The dance was spreading with a ‘soldier-like’ posture that has nothing to do with the original form. Six years ago, I came up with that idea: Why don’t we go the most remote and the least known villages of Aegean part of Anatolia and live there ten days, bring different traditional musicians every night to the village and watch people dance accordingly? Guess what: Whoa! It worked!

As the summer approaches, I begin to feel a great excitement about the next ‘village’. We rent a car with my friends. Before hitting on the road, we have a cigarette and the journey begins. We have a really strict method to find the most appropriate village that can host nearly 100 academicians and students for a week and have a great cultural richness on dances and costumes. Let me explain the method: the far from the nearest city, the best village it is. We are exploring as many villages as possible. Nearly 3000 km of road and more than 100 villages are inspected every summer in one week by me. The local governors of nearly 10 of this villages are narrow minded guys (sorry to say) that is why we eliminate them. So, we I invented a categorization method for the rest 90. It is that:

a-)You get into the village; you sit on the coffee shop and nobody communicates with you. ELIMINATE! Those kinds of villages are the villages also eliminated for their local governors.

     
b-)You get into the village; you sit on the coffee shop and people sitting there welcome you with a smiling face. That’s a good one. Keep that in the list 

         c-)You get into the village; you sit on the coffee shop and people sitting there welcome you they order some tea for you and don’t let you pay anything. That’s better. We are getting to the desired village.
d-)You get into the village; you sit on the coffee shop and people sitting there rise up and salute you as if they were expecting you for years and force you to eat even though you are not hungry. THAT’S IT. LET’S BEGIN THE PREPARATION!

I am not able to find any word to depict that beauty.

Every year, I’m looking forward to seeking the target village. This year the sixth of this project will be conducted and it has already changed the approach to Turkish folk dances by awakening the authenticity ideas on the dance.

With 60-70 student and 15 academicians we settle in the village. Every morning, we go to the farms and barns to work with the villagers to just feel a little bit like a villager. At afternoon, those folk-dance academicians teach us different dances from other provinces of Aegean region. At night the festival begins! All the villagers of the host village and nearby village comes to the village’s square to see the authentic old dances. We only let people who are over 50 to dance because they witnessed the original form of the dance. These night festivities and dances begins around 20:00 and ends around 01:00. We record the intangible cultural heritage items that has not been documented yet. The songs, stories, epics, dances, costumes and so on. After this one-week participants of the project goes back to their home with their own Renaissance. The village realizes the potential of itself and the importance of their heritage and they have their own Reform!

The Renaissance of the individual, the Reform of the community! That’s the outcome! The outcome which is destined to change the prosaic applications on Turkish folklore. However, I'm the crazy and arrogant young lad for the most of the folklorists because I deny any intermediary between the art of the village and the stage. The history will show whose approach is the right one! 

The intellectuals of Turkish folklore and the creators of Turkish folklore. All together!