Fire of Anatolia

The Fire of Anatolia or Anadolu Ateşi is a Turkish dance group consisting of 120 dancers, several choreographers and other technical staff. The group has performed in more than 85 countries from the United States to China and Japan, in front of an audience of approximately 20 million people altogether. Fire of Anatolia holds two Guinness records, one for fastest dance performance with 241 steps per minute and another for largest audience, 400,000 people in Ereğli, in the Black Sea Region of the country. On 9 February 2013, Fire of Anatolia performed at the CCTV New Year's Gala. The head of the group is Mustafa Erdoğan.

The concept of a large dance group performing Anatolian dances mixed with modern dance and ballet was a long desired dream of Mustafa Erdoğan, who conducted folk dance studies at Bilkent University. In 1999 he established the foundations of the group then called Sultans of the Dance. There were advertisements published in local newspapers in search of dancers. Out of 750 applicants Mustafa chose 90, who started working on their physical and dance abilities, under strict supervision. The masters of the dance company educate their dancers themselves, teaching them the basics of ballet, modern dance or folk dance, depending on the dance educational background and the area the dancers need improvements in.

The group had its first performances in 2001 and started a world tour a year later, already under the name Fire of Anatolia. The number of dancers now reaches 120, which means that the group is able to perform the same show in two or three different locations at the same time. According to Erdoğan, Fire of Anatolia is currently among the three largest dance groups in the world. The dance group has performed so far in more than 40 countries, including the United States, Germany, Switzerland, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Russia, Qatar, China, Japan, Kazakhstan, France, Egypt (just in front of the Pyramids), The Netherlands and Mexico.

...
Wikipedia