Join the one and only Amel Tafsout for an in person workshop in Seattle! Qabila Dance Company is pleased to host Amel and we hope you can join us to learn from this special source artist and teacher.
Saturday, July 30
1-1 pm at eXit SPACE - theNEST in Greenlake
$60 advanced registration/$70 at the door
Please send payment via Paypal: https://paypal.me/StefanieFatooh or Venmo: @Stefanie-Fatooh
**Please note that masks must be worn by the attendees to keep everyone safe. We will also be limiting attendance so that attendees can stay properly spaced during the workshop, and the studio we're in has windows that will be open for extra ventilation.
“The dancer does not walk she slides along.” Algerian dancers of the Ouled Nayl tribe have fascinated and inspired the West for more than a century, and became known worldwide through many Western written accounts, Orientalist paintings, and a huge number of “Colonial” postcards. In the past 50 years their dance traditions have disappeared, in part because the West could not recognize that there was a difference between prostitution as a profession, and the empowering Algerian tradition which gave the young girls of the Ouled Nayl a temporary freedom. This Nayli tradition started with female children learning the dance from their mothers; at puberty, the girl would leave her home village, making her way to other oases in order to start a new life while travelling and performing, getting paid with jewelry and living a life of a courtesan. When she had earned enough, she would return to her home oasis, look for a husband, marry and end her professional career after which she hands down her dancing skills to her own daughter.
Amel Tafsout has conducted extensive research about these famous dancers and published an article about their powerful, grounded, and religious dance; she will share not only the movement, but also the history and culture of these iconic dancers who have so influenced Western forms of Oriental dance.
///
Amel Tafsout (meaning ‘Hopes of Spring’) is a charismatic first source international acclaimed Dance artist of North African Maghreb Dance, choreographer, frame drummer, educator, sociolinguist, anthropologist, language scholar, activist, energy worker, poet and writer.
Amel has been advocating and teaching about North African Dances and culture for over forty years. From London to New Zealand to Chile and beyond, Amel Tafsout, has been a driving force for the North African culture all over the world. She brings first-hand knowledge and experience to the classroom. She has dedicated her life not only to raising awareness about her dance culture but also to facilitate a dialogue and building cultural bridges about Arab-North African women. Fluent in five languages, Amel lectures, teaches, performs, and conducts anthropological research.
Amel’s articles relating to dance, cultural traditions and women of the Maghreb have been published in academic and popular magazines. One of her articles, “The gate to Spirituality in North Africa “was published in the Gilded Serpent Magazine and was a reference at the CID-UNESCO conference about the same topic.
Her latest article “ Indigenous Photography, Cliches & Studio Fantasy-
Images of Algerian Women in Colonial Postcards” was published recently at the Gilded Serpent Magazine.
In June 2018, Inanna Iraqi Dance Festival in June 2018 in Estonia gave Amel an Award of acknowledgment and appreciation for her longstanding contributions in Arabic dance and its heritage.
To see more, go to www.ameltafsout.com