Mamouna Rouge Et Les Ambianceuses Presents – “Shake That Sin”
Take Your Power Back – Seven Lovely Women Dance for Seven Lovely Sins
Just the other week I had the great pleasure of seeing the electrifying Mamouna Rouge Et Les Ambianceuses performing “Shake That Sin,” their powerful and often comical dance interpretation of the seven deadly sins.
Lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride, if you need a reminder. Seven deadly sins that have been adapted brilliantly and beautifully by this gifted group of dancers. Mamouna Rouge and Et Les Ambianceuses is a Paris, France based dance group headed by the extremely talented choreographer Mamouna Rouge who was inspired by the deeply felt and mostly female centric societal issues we have with our bodies, ethnicities and social backgrounds. These are subjects that can separate us just as easily as bring us together, but here they are presented as a celebration of our female unity powerfully and poetically in a magnificent union of dance and defiance.
This dance group has their roots firmly in urban African dance like Coupe-Decale (Ivory Coast), Kuduro (Angola), N’Dombolo (Congo) but they also fill the piece with nods to dance from around the world. Belly dancing, modern jazz, burlesque, samba, traditional African dance, Haka (South Pacific Inlands), Kizomba, Funana…and on and on and on.
Mamouna Rouge brings with her a select few of her French troupe and, together with some L.A. dancers, they perform these inspiring and entertaining routines. She teaches workshops at the prestigious Paris dance school Le Centre de Danse du Marais, as well as around the world and has clearly inspired this eclectic group of dancers. They are a hugely relatable and beautifully diverse group of women, with glorious curves and bums and tummies and an awful lot of rhythm.
This is a celebration of humanity, in all the flaws of our sins as well as the glory of our perfections. In this 60 or so minutes of non-stop music and movement and wildly imaginative interpretative and rhythm-driven dance, each routine embodies sin and gives us an answer to it. A problem and a solution all wrapped up in the kind of dance that speaks directly to the expression deep within our souls.
“Shake That Sin – Take Your Power Back” is a direct response to the #METOO and #timesup movements and with the kind of power that only women have and it encourages us to use this power to express ourselves without fear to initiate real and lasting change in our world.
Be empowered ladies, seek out Mamouna Rouge and feel the struggle and the life-force of her dance pass through her and into you. Take that power and make change happen, in your life, on your universal sisters’ lives and all around you.
If you are lucky enough to experience Mamouna Rouge and all she represents, you will also be treated to a very special dance class after the performance. In this class she guides you through the fierce power of African dance to become an unapologetic warrior of not only her dance, but her inclusive and empowering spirit. You will also have a lot of fun unleashing your warrior within, whether you are young or old, man or women, black, brown or white, you will find your power and learn how to wiggle it, bounce it and spread it all around…
You can have a taste of Mamouna’s magic here…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNvwdNkH2Fw