Turkish Theatre, Music, and Dance, Essay Example for Everyone

1. The Book of Dede Korkut is a series of twelve narratives, all narrated by the Chief of the Turkish Oghuz tribe. V. Diez was the first to discover the manuscript in the royal Dresden Library of Germany. Another finding of six stories accompanies this first discovery. The new documents were found in Italy's Vatican Library of Rome. It's not surprising that, the manuscripts were not discovered in Turkey but ended up across Europe in two separate places. You ought to remember that the medieval Anatolia was a blend of cultural realm, described by a wide variety of rulers, mobile populations, and various forms of artistic borrowing, assimilation, and negotiation (Ozturkmen 2014, pp. 37-46). Therefore these late medieval texts must have been transferred to other locations across Europe during borrowing, negotiation, assimilation, and movement of people from the medieval era.

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2. The 'sema' is a religious dance performed by Whirling dervishes to express the love of God, emotion and achieve wisdom. During the performance, Whirling dervishes transpire through a mystical exploration of spiritual ascent through mind and love. The ascent transforms the believer through love allowing them to drop the ego. The performance of the whirling dervishes is categorized as a trance performance (psychotic, hypnotic, possession, epileptic, hallucinatory, shamanic or, ecstatic performance) considering that the spiritual concert is explained as a means to illuminate consciousness and that the music awakens the soul (Schechner, 2011). Qur'an discusses a pre-eternal agreement made between God and Adam's race (VII, 172). You can relate this settlement and that of the mystical Djonayd when explaining the sema. When asked why Sufis convulse in delight when listening to their song, Djonayd answers "When God questioned the genes in Adam's kidneys during the primordial agreement, God announced: 'Am I not your God?' kindness inspires in the souls. When people hear music, this consciousness wakes and shakes them" (Vitray-Meyerovitch 52).

3. The performance process is time-space progression made of proto-performance, performance, and aftermath. The proto-performance is what advances and gives rise to a show. A performance process can also be hypothesized as a precise sequence of training, workshops, rehearsals, warm-up, performing, performance contexts, critical response, cool down, memories and archives. In theory, the ten-part, three-phase performance course is a regular progression, proceeding from one part to the next. However, in the modern performance practice, the performance progression steps are not followed. Not every part is present in all performances. For example, preaching sermons in the Christian evangelical churches. When the priest starts, the lecture is said and sung. Besides, the congregation is answers to the preaching with responsive shouts; driving and uplifting the preacher (Schechner, 2013, pp. 221-245). In such kind of service, the warm-up starts as part of the sermon, the performance expands until the whole place fills up, and ultimately, the aftermath lives in the meaning the congregants carry home when service is over.

4. The Orient was near to Europe, and you must think Orient as the place of oldest colonies, the source of languages and civilizations, and a place of most celebrated richest. Besides, the word Orient has been used to describe European and the rest of the world (the West); regarding contrasting experience, personality, idea and image. The Orient was a European discovery and had been since ancient times a place of remarkable skills, haunting memories, landscapes, romance and exotic beings. While the Orient has long since been an essential measure of European culture and material civilization, the Orient is merely artistic, outdated, tired and politically incorrect. Orientalism represents and expresses a political ideology and culturally part of discourse; that can only hold doctrines, colonial styles, and imperial bureaucracies (Said, 1978). Orientalism is nothing more than racist and politically incorrect, it's an airy fantasy created by the European for many generations. Orientalism merely signifies a long dimension of timeworn political-intellectual culture and hence has less to do with the modern world.

5. It was into an extraordinarily professional and elaborated realm of well-established political custom, involved in keeping the sultan's dominant power that the earliest English ambassadors arrived in Turkey during the start of the seventeenth century. The ambassadors found themselves faced with more potentially dominant and hostile cultures. They had to adapt their lives to a different empire, create meaningful relationships with Turks and modify their interests. When unfamiliar cultures meet each other, both sides almost assuredly resort to the theatre (Hertel, and Taylor, 2012). As such, the English ambassadors acted and invented out particular forms of general identity that they considered suited and essential to the Islamic circumstance. The English ambassadors employed vernacular traditions of role-playing, and play-acting theatrical tendencies get accustomed to the new world. The English ambassadors also used different scripted plays performances to spread into the Ottoman world.

2:1. From the nineteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Ottoman world had a varied practice of dance that included movement systems, folk dancing in the provinces, professional and urban religious dancing contexts. What's the brief account that marked the transition from the Ottoman Empire's dance styles into the modern Turkish performances?

2:2. In the 20th century, Turkish towns had community centers (People's Houses) where political indoctrination and adult educational activities were performed. What were the role and presence of women in the People's Houses?

2:3. What were events that led to the introduction of social interaction and mixed-gender entertainment in a Turkish society full of gender segregation?

2.4. Could you agree that the challenging task of realizing a balance between the Turkish culture and Western civilization is overwhelming to the Turkish population?

2:5. The ancient Turkish world was full of turbulent and complex emotions regarding Arabesque music. What are some of the contrasting views the ancient Turks had towards Arabesque?

References

Hertel, R., and Taylor, F (2012). Early Modern Encounters with the Islamic East: Performing Cultures. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ohiostate-Ebooks/detail.action? docID=932437.

Ozturkmen, A. (2014). Orality, Text, and Performance in the Book of Dede Korkut. Medieval And Early Modern Performance in the Eastern Mediterranean, 37-46. doi:10.1484/m.lmems-eb.1.102259

Said, E., (1978) Orientalism. New York: Random Ho&se, Vintage Books, 1979

Schechner, R., (2011). Performance Studies: An Introduction 98-117. Doi: 10.1057/9780230306059_7

Schechner, R., (2013). Performance-Studies-an-Introduction