As an early offering in their 2024 Turkish-Hungarian Cultural Season, the Embassy of the Republic of Turkey in Budapest and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Turkey collaborated to present one of Turkey’s most well-known dance productions, “Güldestan” (Rosegarden) in Budapest.
Güldestan, performed here at the National Dance Theatre on January 24th, traces its 20-year lineage to its debut in Ankara in 2004 as an exclusive production of the Turkish State Opera and Ballet.
Its ensuing two decades of performances around the world serve as a continuing vehicle of cultural diplomacy with deep historic and dramatic values. Accordingly, some of its scenic backdrops were black and white photos from the collection of Turkey’s most famous photographer, Ara Güler.
Their noted dance director and choreographer, Beyhan Murphy, along with the contemporary world-music artist Mercan Dede, have skillfully blended, as a sort of “recycling of the old stuff” as Murphy puts it, the classical elements from the Ottoman era together with the typical modern café lifestyle.
“I got to choose the A-team of dancers from the five opera and ballet companies in Turkey at that time,” Murphy explains. “It was more ballet-based at first, but as the years went by, I transformed it into something more modern, both in Ankara and Istanbul. We subsequently staged it at all five national companies as well. (Later, the dance company’s identity became officially ‘MDTistanbul.’) My favorite version of Güldestan is the one we are now playing – and it’s a crowd-pleaser, a party piece, actually!”
Mystical undertones
The production embraces the Sufi tradition’s whirling dervishes and their specific musical accompaniment. Thus, the attendant symbolic anticipation of the rose (Gül) becomes the expression of what is mankind’s noblest and purest expression, according to the Sufi culture.
Güldestan features an onstage live band, which serves as both an introductory and intermezzo feature among the scenarios. But it’s Dede’s electronic score that commands the senses with its signature heart-beat pulse and inveigling Eastern melodic twists.
Dede, also known as DJ Arkin Allen among many other monikers, is legendary in Turkey and Canada. One of his more cosmological quotes is “The poet Rumi has a very good saying: ‘If you are everywhere, you are nowhere. If you are somewhere, you are everywhere.’ My somewhere is my heart.”
The costumes, designed by Aysegül Alev and Ismail Dede, used lots of hearty reds throughout: in the traditional striped silk material as jackets in the café scene; the quilted satin rugs that the men turned into exotic turbans; and the final scene’s slo-mo choreo with men in long red skirt/pants, kneeling in a circle as white flower petals fell on them like snow from the sky. An especially striking second scene changed to all-black (for women) and all-white (for men) for the equally striking choreography.
“Dance Adrenaline,” the second MDTistanbul show on the second night (which I did not attend), is a recently created modern dance performance that features the work of five young choreographers from the company, each designing a scenario for this mixed-bill.
The year-long celebration (begun on December 18th) of the 100th anniversary of Hungarian-Turkish events aims to highlight, through arts, science and innovation, the cultural and artistic events that connect the two countries on an individual level and beyond the anniversary as well. While Hungary’s cultural achievements are comparatively more customary, Turkey’s are, in Murphy’s words: “in developing countries like ours, it becomes a mission.”
