Mounia Nassangar: STUCK

In the organizer's words:

Mounia and her crew don't follow the beat, the beat follows them! With STUCK they bring a celebrated Waacking performance to tanzhaus nrw. Waacking is a dance style that emerged in the Afro Latinx American LGBTQI* community in Los Angeles during the disco era of the 70s. In the disco clubs, however, queer people could be themselves. There, waacking became an expressive dance to defend oneself against racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia and to celebrate those aspects of one's own identity that are still considered "weak" and devalued today: Vulnerability, emotionality, femininity. Waacking, that is: rotating arm movements, poses and an emphasis on expressiveness, all combined with disco music. STUCK tells the story of how blockages become movements, how a whack creates space for self-empowerment. Five outstanding dancers dance on stage, whose musicality, body control and expressiveness are fascinating. In STUCK, language stops - and dance takes over. The sound of STUCK echoes the history of waacking: a dance style born out of an act of resistance and self-love.

Mounia Nassangar is an international icon of waacking. She works as a choreographer, dancer, actress, model, DJ, event producer and is also the artistic director of her own company. She has been dancing various styles such as popping, locking, new style, house dance, dancehall and street jazz since the age of five before specializing in waacking. In 2018, Mounia became known to a wide audience through Jean-Paul Gaultier's touching Fashion Freak show at the Folies Bergère in Paris and Gaspar Noé's award-winning film Climax. In 2022, she choreographed the music video SMS by Aya Nakamura, in which she also appears herself, and took over movement direction for the artist Kelela. In 2023, she founded her own company cie.nassangar, with which she developed the piece STUCK in 2024.

Duration: 45 min.
In English. The performance is easy to understand even without knowledge of English. Loud music and strobe.

Recommended for ages 14+