Modern Dance Team celebrates 20th year

ANKARA - Anatolia News Agency

The Modern Dance Team prepares a new 40-minute show for the event.

The Ankara State Opera and Ballet will be celebrating the 20th anniversary of the creation of its Modern Dance Team with a special event set for Feb. 16.

The team will prepare a new 40-minute show for the event, 20 minutes of which will be devoted to reflecting the past, while the other half will be devoted to focusing on contemporary dance, the team’s art director, Yener Turan, recently told Anatolia news agency.

Turan said he had given very serious thought on how to compact 20 years of dance into one single night.
“In this sense, the important thing is to reflect how far we have come within 20 years,” he said. “In the past, we were always worried about audiences, but now the tickets are sold out.”

Ultimately, the team had succeeded in raising the profile of modern dance, said the team’s director.
The Feb. 16 event will also feature a performance of the troupe’s old show “Kahvehane” (Coffee Place) with some of the team’s first alumni, Turan said, expressing excitement that the former dancers would again take the stage.

The night will also include small extracts of shows from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “Night and Day,” which the team staged last year. Turan also said American dancer Michael Popper would be on stage for solo performances.

The dance team has staged a total of 90 plays since 1992.