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Modern Dance Alla Turca: Transforming Ottoman Dance in Early Republican Turkey

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2014

Arzu Öztürkmen
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Extract

This essay looks at the works of Selma Selim Sırrı (b. 1906) and her father Selim Sırrı Tarcan (1874–1956), who wrote on dance in the 1920s, a period that marked the transition from the Ottoman Empire to modern Turkey. The Ottoman Empire ruled across the Mediterranean world between the thirteenth and twentieth centuries, collapsing after World War I. The Republic of Turkey was declared in 1923, distancing itself from the Ottoman tradition to adopt a westernization reform program. Written in the early Republican era, the works of Selma Selim Sırrı and Selim Sırrı Tarcan mark the shift from Ottoman dance traditions to a more Western approach to dance. Inspired by Isadora Duncan, Selma Selim Sırrı (1926) explored the idea of modern dance for Ottoman women in a booklet entitled Selma Selim Sırrı Hanım'ın Bedii Raksları (The Aesthetic Dances of Miss Selma Selim Sırrı, see Fig. 1). Her father was the author of Halk Dansları ve Tarcan Zeybeği (Folk Dances and the Tarcan Zeybek, see Fig. 2), a book that focused on the process of refining folk dances, in particular the zeybek genre, to suit the tastes of an educated, urban audience.

Type
Articles
Information
Dance Research Journal , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , Summer 2003 , pp. 38 - 60
Copyright
Copyright © Congress on Research in Dance 2003

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