Home >> Classes >> ATS in ATL ATL dances ATS American Tribal Style Belly Dance in Atlanta

American Tribal Style Dance ATS Techniques and Formations You will learn the moves, combinations, and formations from the different flavors of American Tribal Style Belly Dance, including Jamila Salimpour/Bal-Anat, Carolena/FatChance and Kajira/Blacksheep styles. ATS moves are mostly borrowed from Middle Eastern belly dance, so you will encounter your familiar Figure 8, Shimmies, etc. What makes ATS special is what it does not have: ATS does not use choreographies, but instead relies on a lead dancer improvising and giving signals/cues to the fellow tribal dancers. Thus, ATS is best performed in groups (tribes), and requires a common "vocabulary" of moves/combinations and their cues. The focus of our course will be the learning of techniques and combinations with their associated cues, and then dancing together practicing the cue-following. New students will focus on techniques, while senior students will focus on formations, add zills to the dance, and practice their improvisational skills by taking turns leading the tribe.

Attire: a big flying skirt is recommended (available at studio), otherwise loose workout clothes, thick socks or ballet slippers for footwear. Open to all Levels.

History and Background Information on American Tribal Style belly dance

• American: The ATS form of dance originated in the late 1960s in San Francisco, CA, USA
• Tribal: "Tribe" refers to the fact that ATS is generally not performed as a solo, but as a group called "tribe".
• Belly dance: The "inventor" of ATS is Jamila Salimpour with her tribe Bal-Anat, who started out as a belly dancer, but modified the dance to fit her needs (see below)

ATS was created by Jamila Salimpour with her tribe Bal-Anat. Jamila was a Belly Dancer performing at Renaissance Fairs, and created ATS to fit her needs: The costuming had to appear more periodic than modern belly dancers cabaret costumes, so Indian style mirrors on cholis and belts took the place of sequence; often turbans cover the head, and many and heavy jewelry is worn, often from Afghanistan or other "...stan" countries, but pieces from all over the world can be used. The belts are often decorated with camel tassels, and cowry shells add a touch of white to the otherwise mostly earthern color tones.

There is a lot of discussion about the relationship of ATS to cabaret style belly dance, and frequent attempts are made to place ATS within the framework of belly dance/folk dance/the common Roma/Gypsy heritage. Truth be told, ATS was developed by a belly dancer - that is your connection. ATS has now 40 years of history, a short time compared to the thousands of years of Middle Eastern dance, but not too shabby compared to the 100 year history of modern cabaret style Middle Eastern dance in the US (introduced 1893 World Fair, Little Egypt).

Clarification: American Tribal Style Belly Dance (ATS) has nothing to do with Native American dancing. ATS has as much to do with Middle Eastern Dance as with Indian, Roma/Gypsy, Flamenco, etc. dancing, except maybe that a larger share of the moves are borrowed from belly dance, and a lot of ATS dancers are former/future belly dancers.
ATS also has little to do with another form of dance that is still struggling with a name, but is commonly referred to as Tribal Fusion, which we also teach.