It's far too easy to summarize Fire of Anatolia as "Turkey's answer to Riverdance", though many critics do.

Like Ireland's smash-hit show, Fire is a rompin', stompin' spectacle that combines color and percussion to convey centuries of culture, history and the vigor of a people.

Mustafa Erdogan, who conducted folk dance studies at Bilkent University, long dreamed of taking this historic culture to a big stage.

He now directs about 120 dancers in the Turkish spectacle - so that, like Riverdance, the troupe can tour more than one location simultaneously.

The Turks have been to 85 countries, including China for a multi-city tour in 2010.

This year, they are back for just four nights in Beijing, though the whole country will get to see the troupe's belly dancers in a short performance on CCTV's Spring Festival Gala.

The dance shows are a prelude to the 2013 Turkish Cultural Year in China, which officially kicks off on March 21 in Beijing and on March 25 in Shanghai.

The ancient region of Anatolia is at the center of modern-day Turkey, and its traditions shaped the culture we now call "Turkish".

Erdogan, however, has embraced all parts of the country in his shows. He choreographs dances from the southern region of Turkey as well as halay - in which dancers form a circle or a line, with the last and first player holding a piece of cloth.

Alper Aksoy directs dances that come from the Aegean region, while Oktay Keresteci adds modern dance and ballet to the mix. Keresteci, at age 48, still performs onstage and choreographs his part of the show.

The roiling music, romantic torchlight (yes, the fire is literal as well as metaphoric), powerful drumming and brilliant costumes have dazzled audiences around the world - and the arbiters of the Guinness World Records. The dancers have been cited for attracting the largest single audience - 400,000 people in the Black Sea town of Eregli - and for most dance steps in one minute: 241.

That's some fast stepping that puts Fire of Anatolia in a league of its own.

michaelpeters@chinadaily.com.cn