�Anadolu Atesi� (The Fire of Anatolia) gave a press a few hours ago conference after TRT recieved many questions relating to the truly spectacular interval act. Esctoday.com asked whether they had watched any previoius interval acts before deciding on what to do for Eurovision, and whether they saw these as competition, in particular 1994�s Riverdance.
Director and founder Mustafa Erdogan stated that he had seen previous Eurovision Interval acts and in particular Riverdance. He said that he does not see Riverdance as any form of competetion, “Anadolu Atesi is a unique dance group and we do not rate ourselves nor see ourselves in competition with any other Eurovision Song Contest interval acts. We are a dance group based on the old ethnic dances of the Anatolian�. He also explained how he managed to get a 300 strong team of dancers, and he explained the audition process that has been ongoing for four years in which all aspects of dance and physicality are taken into account. In the first audition a mere 90 people were chosen out of a 1000 applicants.
Currently there are two teams of dancers, one here in Istanbul for the Eurovision Song Contest and another in Beirut. Anadolu Atesi will soon be on tour, starting in the Netherlands becuase the Netherlands was granted presidency of the EU and the nearest neighbouring country to Turkey they will visit in the short term is Greece. A DVD will also be avaliable later in the year.
