2002: Tanyeli, Tribal, Topkapi and TP

by Ruth

2002 was the year that the Rolling Stones chose to book themselves into our own long-time Festival venue, Enmore Theatre.

American Tribal Style featured in our program for the first time and made it to the cover on its first attempt! American Tribal really took off after cover-gal Susan Brown, formerly of NZ and now of the USA, gave a mesmerising performance with her troupe at the 2001 Bazaar. Fresh from her studies with Fat Chance Belly Dance in San Francisco, Susan captured the imagination of many and Tribal has continued to be a popular component of our workshop program since.

There would be few, if any, at the Gypsy Rendezvous concert who would disagree that Tanyeli was the highlight of the night (and, some would say, of the Festival). Shimmering in lime green, she turned on an amazing performance, despite being let down by her drummers and having to switch to recorded music at the last minute. No-one seeing her performance could doubt the validity of Tanyeli's claim to international stardom!!!

Unfortunately, we can't show you any images of Tanyeli's performance because to this day we have failed to locate anyone who took any. Which is a big compliment to Tanyeli - everyone was too busy watching.

Above from left (click to enlarge): Bride and bearers, (clockwise from back left) Leonie with Jane and Turkish Delights Ileana, Nabila and moi(!), assorted Delights in Black Sea mode, the bride's entrance. Turkish ice-cream at the Bazaar.

At the dinner dance, Topkapi Wedding, the price was up and the attendance was down. The location, about 8km away from the other venues, deterred some. Always flexible, we were happy to provide details about alternative belly dance events round town that night to those who weren't tempted by the Festival dinner, and we hear that the Lebanese nightclubs did pretty well. It all keeps Sydney dancers in regular jobs!

But yes, there really WAS a wedding, complete with bride and groom, el zaffa, shamadans, drummers, rose petals and Nubian bearers. Turkish band Nida played and Russya from Germany danced, as did ancient Greek-style group Artemis.

The Turkish Delights' Black Sea number was met with more than a few perplexed faces from the non-Turks in the audience, which just serves to illustrate how much the Australian belly dance community has to learn about Turkish dance and culture! Tanyeli came and taught us a bit more with an impromptu performance.

The elegant venue got the thumbs up, except by dancers who unwittingly strayed under the air conditioning outlet in the middle of the dance floor while performing with a veil (hark to the voice of personal experience).

At the Bazaar we in the east were treated to our first show from Rose of WA. And what a treat it was. Rose's performance was definitely a Festival highlight. Leonie quickly snapped her up to return and perform in 2003.

In 2002 the Festival got its own domain name - sydmedfest.com - and the website waved farewell to the freebie hosting site and moved to a new home with a professional webhosting outfit, free at last from those annoying ads we couldn't control. Also in 2002, it finally occurred to us that a Festival Information Desk might be a good idea!

Mention must be made of the Great Toilet Paper Incident of 2002. Yes, it ran out. On the Bazaar day. Early. With record numbers of people in attendance. However we can report that, in all the best traditions of the Festival, we soldiered on nonetheless, (if a tad uncomfortably), and many lessons were learned etc etc. Fortunately, there was no discernible effect on attendance the following year.