Rhythmic booty-shaking has been around for centuries. Created in Africa and brought to Latin America and the US through the slave trade, these dances have been used for weddings, to induce fertility, to strengthen pelvic muscles after birth and to celebrate from a place of resistance, always in community. Twerk, more specifically, is the US’s version of Booty Dance. A term coined in the 90’s by DJ Jubilee aka King of Bounce. The New Orleans Bounce movement is currently pioneered by the LGBT community and last year we had the pleasure of bringing the one and only Big Freedia to Europe in order to help contextualize the European twerker experience within this tradition.

 In this presentation, we’ll discuss the value of liberating this essential part of our body where all human sexuality is developed and transforming it into a thriving, pleasurable and normalized space, not only to be referenced in the bedroom or at the doctor’s office. We’ll spotlight the female experience within this paradigm in a current climate where many decisions about her body are not hers to make, remaining mindful of the appropriation that can occur when those in privilege adopt practices created by minority groups and understanding that the WOC’s body is much more objectified and eroticised than her white counterparts. When practiced from a place of respect and compassion for the origins coupled with corporal intelligence, can this type of expression help empower us and give a new meaning to our possibilities within the public spaces we inhabit?

INTRODUCTION

Dance has always acted as a channel assisting us to better understand not only our current reality but also, our history. Nowadays many people understand dance as something that one can or cannot do, as if it were reserved for only a specific set of people in determined settings. We seem to forget that its uses are abundant and rooted in the most basic and primordial vitality matters. Historically, they’ve served as survival rituals with various objectives whether to induce fertility, bring forth rain or harvest ideal hunting conditions, for example, and that everybody within the tribe played a part in these ceremonies.

Today we’ll be focusing more on those fertility and general celebratory dance expressions that highlighted female sensuality and were practiced in a collective manner, before and after what we know as the patriarchal civilization. According to research concluded by Casilda Rodrigañez, author of “We Will Give Birth in Pleasure,” these dances practiced by women in circle were, in their beginnings, autoerotic and expressed a common and universal sexuality before becoming “seduction dances.” As stated by Casilda, in these ancient cultures little girls grew up moving their pelvis spontaneously without inhibition or censorship and were encouraged by other family members to find pleasure within these female “circle dances.”

For many people, a rigid pelvis is the norm. Years and years of moral, religious and pseudo- intellectual prejudice has really done a number on us. This essential part of our body where all human sexuality is developed becomes shut down as early as infancy as we become socialized by our parents, teachers and other adult figures to reject our innate sexual impulses. This idea born from platonism and developed during the french enlightenment was the precursor to puritanism leading us to disconnect mind from body. In order to behave like civilized people, we ended up intellectualizing this fundamental area of our anatomy: our root chakra, center of all stability and sacred space where life is brought into this world. Reducing our bodies to a concept, especially the areas containing our reproductive organs, idealizes them and robs them of their nature, essence and functionality. Even more alarming, it exposes them to illness and injury. As Hippocrates told us as early as 450 BC: “All parts of the body which have a function if unused and left idle they become liable to disease, defective in growth and age quickly.”

Using my professional experience as an instructor and choreographer coupled with my degree in Sociology and Dance and most recently as a witness to the magical transformation my body underwent creating a life inside of me and birthing one, today we’re going to talk about the value of liberating this essential part of our body where all human sexuality is developed and transforming it into a thriving, pleasurable and normalized space, not only to be referenced in the bedroom or at the doctor’s office.

PART 1: My Journey

At the age of 15, I started training in various dance genres from hip hop to afro-brazilian dance to jazz and many others. In my opinion, engaging in more forms of artistic exploration helps us learn more about life’s truths. This innate curiosity and hunger to seek out unique languages of dance has led me to explore over 5 continents in pursuit of new expression. I believe we can learn a lot about a culture by studying how their people move.

I also believe that a big part of human expression stems from our core and the manipulation of the gravitational muscles that work to maintain our balance. These same forces can register alterations to our emotional state and thus generate meaning production. After having a baby, I’ve become even more fascinated with how the joints of our core and pelvis connect, understanding the articulations originating from them and exploring the power within this essential area of our anatomy.

As a North American, I grew up influenced by US popular culture. I remember being 7 years old watching MTV and copying all the dance moves I saw in the videos from Michael Jackson’s Thriller to Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation and everything in between. I’ve always been fascinated by popular dance and the social dances that marked my adolescence were predominantly urban styles with a waist-down emphasis. In fact, the category of dance I’m currently primarily teaching is called Booty Dance: a style centralized on the mobilization, activation and control of the pelvis, hips and booty.

We were raised with these bottom-heavy dances in an organic way; doing the “crybaby,” “the butterfly” and other popular movements from the Booty Dance Dictionary whether it was at a sleepover, in between basketball practices or at the 7th grade private school dances we’d sneak into.

 In 1988, it was called “Doing the butt”

In 1992, it was called “Shaking your Rump”

In 1999, it was “Back that Azz up”

 It’s true that we may not have understood their historical use at the time but we had all the context one can be afforded whilst coming of age immersed in these popular social dances.

However when those in privilege like myself adopt practices created by minority groups, we must remain mindful of the appropriation that can occur. It’s fundamental that we first understand the history of this dance style, who invented it and how to dance it from a place of respect and compassion for the origins so as to not convert it into a mere product of consumption and elimination, erasing the authentic creators from its narrative. Us white people forget the many privileges that benefit us, one being that society generally praises us when we borrow elements from minority cultures. Whereas we seem more cool and edgy when we twerk, the actual innovators of twerking are, in this case, chastized for confirming a hyper-erotic stereotype. As journalist Eboni Harris writes: “White people in general can participate in black culture when it suits them yet they have the privilege of retreating into the safety that not being black affords them at any moment.” The other side to white privilege is that the wrong people are often credited as the creators of said culture.

 

I’m going to give a few examples of this privilege in relation to dance. Even though Fred Astaire may be the most well-known tap dancer ever, history tells us that this genre of dance was invented by the African-American and Haitain-American slaves as a means of communication after the Negro Act of 1740 was implemented. Despite the fact that Madonna brought Vogueing to the masses, its roots can be found in the black and brown communities of Harlem, primarily within the Drag Queen collectives of the 80’s. Lastly, when we talk about booty dances or more specifically, “Twerking,” Miley Cyrus comes to mind when in reality, the origins belong to the LGBTQ community of New Orleans. This privilege is a phenomenon so omnipresent that it’s almost invisible to those that benefit from it. But in a racist society where police continue assaulting the black community in broad daylight, we must revise these privileges. As US actress and activist, Amandla Sternberg asked: “What would the US be if we loved black people as much as we love black culture?”

Here in Europe where there isn’t an organic relationship with this style of dance, many people don’t have the proper resources to contextualize their experience within these traditions. Consequently, they don’t dance them from a place of respect and their symbolic value is discarded, converting them into something trivial that can be capitalized upon. This we see a lot here in Europe where many white-owned studios and organizations profiting off a “cherry-picked’ version of this custom in many cases excluding the participation of instructors of color, and actively avoiding relying on original sources as their educators.  I found this reality to be very problematic and dangerous so when my hip hop students started asking me to “teach them how to twerk,” my main objective was to give them the context I was afforded while insisting they always follow choice rules while practicing this type of expression: understand the origins and give credit, respect your body with safe and proper technique and celebrate yourself.  I also provided them with the correct references of the culture so they could continue investigating on their own.

 

PART 2: ORIGINS & HISTORY

Booty shaking is an ancestral movement. Created in Africa and brought to Latin America and the US through the slave trade, these dances have been used for weddings, to induce fertility, to strengthen pelvic muscles after birth and to celebrate from a place of resistance, always in community.

In each of the various countries where slave descendants currently reside, we’ll find a variation of these booty dances with their own technique, name and corresponding musical style. In Colombia, it’s called the “Mapale,” in the Ivory Coast it’s called the “Mapouka” and in Jamaica, it’s encompassed under the term “Dancehall”. However, none of these names sound quite as familiar as Twerk does. So much so that the term was added to the Oxford Dictionary in 2013 and was just shy of being awarded “Word of the Year,” losing to “Selfie.” Ironically the word was heard for the first time more than 25 years ago in a song called “Do the Jubilee All” by DJ Jubilee aka King of Bounce in 1993.

Twerk describes the US’s version of these booty dances and it consists of a sharp pelvic movement that can be done with emphasis going forward with the help of gravity or backward, against it. Many times this movement is reinforced by successive claps in the music, also known as the Cheeky Blakk claps named after the New Orleans native and musical artist. It’s a technique that can be executed in many different positions but always with knees slightly bent and the core muscles activated. To do the movement correctly, one must mobilize the pelvis to rotate forward and back continuously while at the same time relaxing the glute muscles.

Big Freedia, singer and public figure known as one of the Twerk pioneers, puts this celebratory dance into context. At her concerts, she encourages everyone to leave their ego behind and shake in community, always promoting diversity and celebration in mass. You can find entire generations of families from kids to grandparents participating in her performances. Freedia also holds the record for Most People Twerking Simultaneously set in 2013. Many folks would have a different idea about Twerk if their first contact with it were videos like this. It’s important to highlight that the New Orleans Bounce movement is currently pioneered by the LGBTQ community. It’s one of the few cultures, if not the only, within hip hop music where trans artists like Katey Red or cross-dressers and gender non-conforming artist Big Freedia have been able to shine. This shows us how minority groups have been able to empower themselves through these types of dances.

In 2017 in fact, we had the pleasure of bringing the one and only Big Freedia to Madrid for the Spanish Bounce Shakedown we organized in order to help contextualize the European twerker experience within this tradition. Unfortunately of the many organizations reaping benefits from the twerking craze, we had a very disappointing turnout. This truth helps to explain how the commercialized concept of twerk can also serve as just another medium for the patriarchy and its powerful sex industry if we don’t practice it in honor of its true heritage. The viral twerk videos featuring young women with normalized bodies, no cellulite, mostly white, twerking in their underwear to disrespectful song lyrics are not an accurate representation of this culture. These dances originated in the streets, from a place of resistance, celebration and pleasure giving new meaning to the public spaces they inhabited and always, with diversity!

 

BOOTY DANCE & EMPOWERMENT

Though Booty Dances are not synonymous with empowerment, I do believe that they can afford us many benefits when we practice them from a place of respect and corporal consciousness.

There is much value in freeing our pelvis and getting to know this important part of our body where all human sexuality is developed. Transforming this taboo area into a thriving, pleasurable and normalized space, not only to be referenced in the bedroom or at the doctor’s office, is very cathartic and refreshing.  Along a more spiritual line, when we activate these spaces where our root chakra resides, we connect more closely to the earth, we center ourselves and facilitate the flow of energy throughout our body. Learning to control, take pleasure and feel comfortable with these parts of our anatomy can be very liberating. It doesn’t need to serve as the epitome of female emancipation in order to be valuable because it’s already revolutionary in and of itself.

In a current climate where many decisions about our bodies are not ours to make, this type of expression and movement allows us to exercise our own physical, emotional and sexual autonomy.  This is especially important to consider as we are living in a patriarchal and mysoginistic society where the repression of female sexuality is a billion dollar business. Women are taught to be sexy for others but not for themselves. More than often through money-generating mediums like the cis porn industry and/or male-owned strip clubs or magazines. The objectification of our bodies and the idea that our sexuality is nothing more than the product of the male gaze to be capitalized upon is still much more common than the idea that woman can be sexual subjects, a freedom their male counterparts are afforded without question. It says a lot about the extreme gender inequalities that still exist.

Due to these same motives, students have shared with me that on more than one occasion they’ve felt assaulted while dancing sensually in public, as if all the sudden their bodies no longer belonged to them but to the masses. I created my slogan “To twerk is not a crime” with this in mind as being the owners of our bodies and our sexuality is not a crime. It’s a revolution.

To finish up, I’d like to mention some of the many positive testimonies from my students in relation to our booty dance classes. Many have shared that their menstruation is less painful as this style of dance helps relax the uterus, others declare an improvement in their sexual relations and orgasms as they have a better understanding of their pelvic muscles. Various claim an improvement in overall posture and a decrease in lower back pain while several who once had complexes about their bums now celebrate them instead of trying to hide them. Remember that our bums are made up of 3 different muscles: gluteus maximus, medius and minimus. That’s a lot of power for an area we prefer to use only as a seat!

I personally was shocked by the capacity of my pelvic floor muscles to bounce back after birthing a 9 pounder with forceps and episiotomy. My doctor told me that my muscles were stronger and more functional than many women who’d never even given birth and this just 6 weeks post-partum. World-renowned midwife, Ina May Gaskin, wrote the following: “Several ancient cultures recognise the need for pelvic-muscle strengthening after childbirth in the dances that women do. Belly dancing from the Middle East, the Hula from the Pacific Islands and rhythmic booty shaking from Africa are all examples of movements that have been used to strengthen the pelvic muscles after giving birth.”

In conclusion, when we idealise this essential area of our body, we reduce it to a concept and in the long run, end up suffering from all sorts of disorders such as incontinence, impotence and organ prolapse. We have to remember that our bodies weren’t made to suffer, like everything else our bodies produce, pleasure also serves a physiological, regulatory function. It’s not random or dispensable. We are cerebral beings but we experience life physically through our bodies and a rigid pelvis does not make us more intellectual and it certainly doesn’t make us happier. There are many ways to unite the corporal with the cognitive in a healthy, natural way and thanks to these dances, I have been able to witness the transformative power that liberating the pelvis rewards us.