dance in one form or another has featured in most of my life.
only wondering about the tango history?
as a little girl i admired the ballerinas, probably their tutus more than anything. when mum told me they weren't allowed to eat as much icecream as they wanted. this was the end of my ballet aspirations. turkish folk dances seemed to require less of a discipline regarding ice creams and promised travel opportunities so that's what i did at primary school through to the end of high school.
other dances kept grabbing my attention on the side. i met modern and jazz dance at intermediate school and continued until ballroom and latin took over.
last year of high school, the school prom preparations introduced couple dancing into my dance repertoire. the main significance of this little prom preparation was what the teachers Mine and Ercument were doing during the breaks. they played some magical music and did something which was visibly a dance but one that made me feel that there was something else going on which was not immediately visible. i was enchanted.
turns out the music was loreena mckennit's 'tango to evora' and the dance they were doing was argentine tango.
whilst at my first year at university, my prom dance partner Cagan dragged me to METU Couple Dances Club. METU Couple Dances Club (http://www.eslidanslar.com) became a Very Large Part of My Life for the next six years. in various partner combinations, i taught social latin and ballroom and performed at countless small shows and several large shows. i even had a taste of dancing for a living when ten of us spent a couple of months in Bodrum, performing 3 to 5 nights a week.
i competed in three national latin dance championships with Ilker Turkmen. our best effort was a national third place. i think we both preferred performing to the inevitable aggressiveness that comes with competing. Ilker is now a great salsa dancer (http://www.queleback.com) and I discovered Argentine tango which slowly took over my dance life since 1999.