Expect more than finger-snapping, hip-shaking and two-piece costumes that look like rejects from the set of “I Dream of Jeannie” at today’s Tribal Fusion Belly Dance performance at the Fowler Museum.
“Tribal fusion is a fusion of American tribal style, which has a lot of flamenco influence and Turkish Belly Dance,” Wilson said. “What you would call “˜regular’ belly dancing is probably Egyptian cabaret, which is done to Egyptian pop music. The regular onlooker would consider tribal fusion belly dance to be a little more innovative, more contemporary.”
At the Fowler Museum tonight, tribal fusion belly dancers from the UCLA community and the L.A. area come together in a variety show to show off the range of dancers and troupes performing the tribal fusion belly dance style.
“I’m trying to diversify the programming at the Fowler Out Loud series, so it’s not just musicians but other kinds of performance as well, which includes dance and theater,” said Kingsley Irons, Fowler Out Loud coordinator and graduate from the world arts and culture department.
The American “tribal style” is an improvisational dance style developed in the 1970s in San Francisco by dancer Carolena Nericcio and her studio. In tribal style, a group of dancers improvise based on movement cues that a leader provides. The movement cues, however, are completely unrecognizable to the audience, so that the movements in tribal fusion belly dance appear completely fluid.
These movement cues expand upon what Wilson defines as a “dance vocabulary,” or a set of skills and movements attributed to Turkish belly dance, folk dances and contemporary dance forms such as Flamenco, traditional Indian dance Bharata Natyam, Bhangra, hip-hop and modern dance.
“The power and palette tends to be a little bit darker, and the music is up to one’s interpretation. A lot of people choose music that’s electronic, but it can be anything, really,” Wilson said.
When Irons saw April Rose Wilson perform in the world arts and culture department, she found her dancing a mesmerizing fit for the Fowler Out Loud program.
“When I saw (Wilson) perform, I thought she was so engaging that I wanted her to curate something for the Fowler Out Loud (program),” Irons said. “Her presence on stage is electrifying. She’s fluid and rhythmic, earthy and powerful.”
The dancers at Fowler tonight will display this range of stylistic differences in both group and solo acts, though a common theme running through the show is that of appropriation and collaboration from other dance movements and style. For example, Heather Shoopman and Calamity will perform a piece titled “Eastern Jam,” a collaboration to the sounds of Bollywood music and dubstep, a type of dark European electronic dance music.
Wilson’s dance troupe, The Nautch Project, will perform a piece Wilson choreographed called “Appropriation Nation” about how dance cultures borrow extensively from each other.
“As a dance student at UCLA, I learn about the politics of dance all the time,” Wilson said. “I traveled to India three months last summer, and I’ve been studying Hindi and some different Indian dance forms.”
“I incorporate movement from Hot Pot-style dance, which is UNMATA’s ““ a tribal fusion dance group that Wilson is a part of ““ style in Sacramento and also some American tribal style and some of my contemporary movements.”
What Wilson most looks forward to about tonight’s performance, however, is the collaboration of three solo belly dancers who do not normally work together: Monica DangerPants, Ayse Cerami and Sherri Wheatley. All three dancers bring different skills to the collaboration, with DangerPants’ past experience in burlesque and fire arts, Cerami’s tribal fusion troupes and Sherri’s tribal fusion workshops.
Irons, especially, looks forward to welcoming members from outside the UCLA community onto the Fowler Museum stage.
“We want to be a bridge between the UCLA student community and the Los Angeles community,” Irons said.