American Tribal Style Belly Dancers



Cinnibar Red Dance Collective - ATS belly dancers

At the Willunga Folk Festival today Mum and I were very impressed with the folk dancers, singers and musicians.  My favourite was the Cinnabar Red Dance Collective an amazing group of contemporary American Tribal Style (ATS) belly dancers. 

ATS is an elegant belly dance style created in San Fransisco about 20 years ago and incorporates various other dance styles such as Flamenco, Egyptian, Indian and Oriental.  It was explained that the various movements are learnt like the alphabet and then used to create the vocabulary of movements and cues.  There is no choreography as such as it is created on the spot.  How fantastic to enjoy free movement.

Rachel - belly dancer

The women were absolutely stunningly beautiful with a mixed age group.  They wore the most magnificent black flowing dresses with red, black and white frills, and beautiful tribal belts with tiny coins that jingled as they moved their hips. They were adorned with impressive tribal jewellery like silver earrings, headpieces, bracelets, anklets, and wore tribal head pieces and red and white roses in their hair. They had zills or otherwise known as finger cymbals are tiny metallic cymbals in their hands.

It was lovely to see these beautiful women dancing, it gave me a feeling of encouragement and embracing being a woman.  It made me feel strong and proud of them.  They chanted Lu Lu Lu with a hand above their mouth which is a middle eastern chant that women use as a compliment like well done to each another. 

To help set the tempo there were some men playing percussion too.

I would love to learn this one day.  They looked like they were enjoying it so much. 

To read more about American Tribal Style Belly Dance see their website http://www.cinnabarred.com/