One of the world’s most renowned dance groups will make its way to Cairo this month for a special series of performances taking place at the Sound and Light Show Theater at the Pyramids. The Fire of Anatolia, a Turkish production that has impressed audiences from Beijing to Chicago, brings to life thousands of years of Anatolian cultural tradition in a colorful combination of sound, light and movement.

The group is performing in Egypt under the auspices of the Cairo Opera House.

The history of Anatolia, a vast swath of land covering the bulk of Turkey east of the Bosphorus, is central to the history of human development. Since prehistoric times, human civilization has flourished in the region, radiating its culture, technology and religion both eastward and westward. Many Semitic and Indo-European languages find their origins there. Most famously, Homer’s Iliad focused on the Trojan War, a series of battles fought for the conquest of Troy, an Anatolian city dating back to 3000BC.

With such an extensive and diverse subject to consider, producer Mustafa Erdogan’s ambition to tell the story of Anatolia through the arts is ambitious, to say the least. Using modern and classical music, costumes, dance and theater, his production brings Asia Minor out of the history books, showing that it is alive and vital not only in Turkey, but throughout the world through its pervasive cultural and historic legacy.

Erdogan is a long-standing figure in the Turkish dance community. His interest in the traditional folk dances of Eastern Turkey led him to create the Sultans of the Dance company in 1997 — it quickly rose to national and international prominence and became one of Turkey’s most successful dance troupes. His ambitions then grew, and in 2002 he conceived the idea of a large-scale production exploring the cultural history of his beloved Anatolia.

Now featuring a cast of over 120 dancers and musicians, The Fire of Anatolia has achieved some remarkable feats: a performance in front of 400,000 spectators in the city of Konya on the Black Sea, a Guinness World Record attempt for the world’s fastest-moving dance routine, and a televised performance in front of a potential audience of 3 billion people at the first ever Turkish Formula 1 Grand Prix.

The show was last in Cairo in 2005, when it gave four sell-out shows at the Citadel, with a total audience of over 10,000. It received glowing reviews in the local press. This time, it comes to Cairo after dates in Dubai, the Netherlands, Russia and Slovenia — and after two unexpected hiccups in late-January. On January 27, a traffic accident left 15 dancers injured, three of them seriously. Only four days later, thieves broke into Erdogan’s office, stealing the passports of 38 cast and crew members — only two days before the beginning of the current 52-city world tour, this was an unwelcome inconvenience.

However, the show must go on, as they say, and the opening performances of the tour went ahead as planned, earning the typical rave reviews. Notwithstanding another unfortunate setback, Cairo audiences will be able to enjoy the spectacle of The Fire of Anatolia in the Sound and Light Show Theater at the Pyramids on March 25 and 26, and subsequently in Sharm El-Sheikh and Alexandria.  et

For more information on the full March schedule at the Cairo Opera House, refer to www.cairooperahouse.org or call +2 (02) 739-8144.