She is a belly dancer, and you know she can teach you dances from my neighborhood, I mean Roma dances, and people always mistake her for a Roma woman. … Yeah, of course she is tall and blonde and all, but you gotta see her dancing, her dancing is so local, like the women in Roma weddings. Once, she was teaching us how the hand undulations should never be forced on a student, but the student should find her own hand undulations based on the given technique, and it took us an hour to decipher how each and every hand undulation referred to a basic custom like showing your bracelets or unleashing the locks of your hair. … It was awesome." I wanted to talk once again about the issue of following one's passion even if it involves moving to another country and performing that country's cultural traditions. Janet, through her dance and life, is doing the difficult thing of leaving a ready-made home, a circle of friends and a career back home and sailing for the unknown. But, we see that in her case, a strong enough will is capable of being accepted anywhere no matter how far away from its natural surroundings.
Her name is Janet, but she dances under the name Cennet (heaven). She believes heaven doesn't exist as a literal place, but as a state of consciousness we can eventually reach. And for some reason, her road to heaven passes through İstanbul, which she sometimes thinks is akin to hell on earth.
She first came to İstanbul in 2003 with a group of Rotarians on an exchange. They did the typical quick tour of the main areas in İstanbul for one month. On her last weekend here, she met up with Reyhan Tuzsuz and took Roma dance lessons. She was so affected by Turkey in general, the beauty of the land, the magic of the music and the possibility of getting deep into Roma culture that she left Turkey knowing that her fate was to return here and stay. She was in America for two more years before she was able to return to Turkey. She was studying contemporary dance at the University of Utah in the US when she decided to do a three month intensive study of the Turkish Roma -- or Turkish gypsy -- dance. She arrived again in İstanbul on May 10, 2005, whereby her purse, passport and all the money for her flat rent were immediately stolen from the taxi. She needed to find a job, so she started teaching English, which cut down the time she could spend studying Roma, but she went at least once a week to classes with Reyhan. She also spent time with the dance troupe Anadolou Ateşi, dancing with them in their studios during rehearsals.
After two months, she had to decide what her next step would be. At home in America her family, her dogs, her friends and her school waited for her. But she felt like she had just begun a process that would last years in Turkey and felt like leaving would be leaving her path. She returned to America for a dance project in New York. She went home, said goodbye to her family, packed her things, sold her car and came back to Turkey.
When she returned to İstanbul she stayed on the floor of some other Americans' apartment. She had no money, no job and no idea what she would do. She continued to see Reyhan when she could afford it and worked as an English teacher in a small school. Eventually, through good friends, she found her own room and a better job, and through those connections, she started connecting with other musicians and dancers. At a party one night, she joined the others in dancing to Roma music. The clarinetist liked her dance. He found out who she was and asked her to dance for his ensemble. This took her to Çorlu quite often, and she spent time in the mahalles there, dancing with the ensemble and celebrating holidays, such as Hidrellez, in the traditional way. Dancing with this group was more of a learning experience than a peak in her career. But she realized her dance was something that both Roma and non-Roma people could relate to.
While she was in America, she was often listening to Turkish music such as Erkan Oğur, Selim Sessler, Burhan Öçal and her favorite, Baba Zula. She had often fantasized about performing with them. She wrote them an e-mail once with some pictures and proposed to dance with them. This was soon after her permanent return to İstanbul. They did a few rehearsals and a few shows together, but slowly after six months or so, they started to dance continually together. She and a few other dancers are now part of the core of the group. They tour continually internationally, so she often travels from İstanbul to Europe with them. She says it is an honor for her to represent an aspect of Turkey that has existed forever -- the foreign Istanbulite.
She has moved around many places in İstanbul and lived in many types of situations, from mornings in gypsy mahalles to evenings in luxury Bosporus restaurants. She likes life as an observer of İstanbul's contrasts and ironies, beauty and ugliness.
After almost three years she says she is almost fluent in the language. Well, I would say she is much more than that; she is like your neighbor across from whom you visit to gossip while knitting woolen scarves for the family. She has that kind of intimacy in her Turkish, which I think is probably due to spending so much time in Roma mahalles. That allows her to communicate with basically everyone from every part of Turkish society, which is a blessing that does not happen to many foreigners living in İstanbul.
She teaches dance here at a studio weekly and from her home she gives private classes. She has close friends who are also foreigner artists here to learn about traditional Turkish music and arts, and though they don't collaborate so often (choosing instead to work with other Turks), they support each other and help each other cope with occasional bouts of culture shock.
Yet another Christmas away from home
This Christmas she will be away at her fiance's home in Portugal, another type of culture shock. She misses her family a lot, though she has a sister here, which really helps keep her grounded. It is easy to forget who you are and where you come from, she says, when you don't have other people around you with the same customs and ideas. "More than that," she says, "you can start to feel crazy for your different thoughts and actions."
She does not feel very connected to her American roots, and she doesn't consider herself a representative of America, nor is she running away from her country. She is in Turkey because of the depth of its resource for history, art, inspiration and music. It is like the hub of the wheel with spokes around the world. When she is here, she feels connected to a million different roads. All of those roads lead to a different humanity.
She loves Anatolian history -- the Aegean customs, the costumes from around Turkey, the asiks, the instruments. She loves the old Greek and Armenian architecture in İstanbul's streets. All these things inspire her to stay here and to continue to develop her personal art, and work with artists that are interested in using art to develop inter-human understanding.
When I look at her, I see a strong and inspiring woman whose story makes us feel that following the voice in one's heart is the foolproof method to success, which is nothing more than happiness and the state of sharing that happiness through inspiration by all means.
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