NEW TURKISH DANCE.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 255, 27 October 1928, Page 7 (Supplement)

NEW TURKISH DANCE.

KEMAL PASHA AND THE "ZEIBEK"

■The "Delibab" ("Mirage"), a journal of the dance, writes that a new Turkish dance, the "Zeibek," has been introduced by Kemal Pasha to Turkish society at the Tokatlion Palace at Pera. It is stated that last summer Kemal Pasha expressed his disapproval of the modern European dances which are being adopted at the Turkish pleasure resorts, and, remembering that he had seen the "Zeibek" performed some years before at a girls' school in Smyrna, he called in the help of the pedagogue, Selim Sirry Bey, to modernise it for general use.

The new dance, which was originated by ; the Zeibeks (an old Turkish race inhabiting the mountains near Smyrna, who performed it with knives and daggers and pistols, to the music of shepherds' pipes), has been transformed to symbolise the earth (the man) turning round the sun (the woman), and the dance ends after five figures by the gentleman embracing his partner. It is stated that the two daughters of Selim Sixty Bey will start on a-tour of Europe with the 1 object of studying Western dancing and bringingold Turkish, dances up to data.