Cote D’Ivoire's Mapouka Dance - The Roots Of Twerking (information & videos)

Edited by Azizi Powell

This post presents information about & three videos of the Mapouka Dance of Cote D' Ivory (the Ivory Coast), West Africa. This post also presents information about the New Orleans, Louisiana (USA) dance "twerking" which is based on Mapouka and other butt shaking African dances.

The content of this post is presented for folkloric, cultural, entertainment, and aesthetic purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners.

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INFORMATION ABOUT THE MAPOUKA DANCE
From http://pagnecraze.wordpress.com/tag/mapouka/
"Mapouka
Also known as Macouka, it is a traditional dance from the area of Dabou in southeast Côte d’Ivoire, sometimes carried out during special ceremonies. It is also known as, “La danse du fessier” or “the danse of the behind”.

This dance has a choreography that can be very sexually suggestive. The dance mostly involves women shaking their buttocks sideways vigorously, facing away from their audience. In the 1980′s, artists of the Ivory Coast tried without much success to popularize it. One of the most well known groups is Tueuses de Mapouka.

There are two forms of the dance, the original and the modern. The modern is danced mostly by young people and is considered more obscene and improper by some due to its suggestive nature.

In 1998, the government of Côte d’Ivoire decided to prohibit its performance in public. It is, paradoxically, following this prohibition that the dance now enjoys a very fast-growing global popularity, especially in the sub-Saharan countries and western nations with large Francophone communities."
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From http://niguisaff.com/mapoukadance.htm
"Mapouka - is an exciting dance-form emanating from Cote D’Ivoire. The dance is the traditional expression of the peoples of the Southern villages of Cote D’Ivoire--the Avikam. The dance has long been a part of the Avikam expression--quintessential to their traditional belief system and a matter of ceremony.

In the early 1990s, the dance was discovered by the outside world when a number of videos began circulating in Paris, France. What the world saw was incredible. Women moving their legs in such a manner that their behinds gyrate with minimal assistance from hips or waist. The dance emerged from a history of traditional ceremonies where the women wore long wrap-skirts. But now, it was on display in clubs and dance halls where buxom young women wiggled their bottoms while wearing shorter skirts and spandex-shorts. The dance now suddenly appeared provocative. In fact, in 1995, the dance was outlawed in Cote D’Ivoire because the authorities deemed it erotic and inappropriate. The dance has legally returned and continues to enjoy immense popularity not only in Cote D’Ivoire but also throughout West Africa."
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From http://www.nytimes.com/2000/05/28/world/dance-has-africans-shaking-behinds-and-heads.html "Dance Has Africans Shaking Behinds, and Heads" By NORIMITSU ONISHI, Published: May 28, 2000
"The night was getting wild, the air tense with expectation, as the crowd at a military academy here waited for the show's top act, three female Ivoirian dancers known as Les Tueuses, or The Killers. Until last December, Les Tueuses, the queens of a suggestive dance craze called the mapouka, had been banned from television, judged too vulgar by the government, which was subsequently toppled in a Christmas Eve coup.

Their reputation rehabilitated under military rule, Les Tueuses finally took the stage recently, quickly shedding their diaphanous white robes in favor of blue sequined bikini tops and long skirts with, of course, never-ending slits. As uniformed soldiers stretched to keep the crowd of hundreds under control, Les Tueuses plunged into the audience, targeting a cadet here, another there, leaving the young men, and women spectators, dazed under a blur of gyration and Banned from Ivoirian television -- chased away by officials in neighboring countries like Togo, Niger, Burkina Faso and Benin -- mapouka spread nevertheless along the West African coast, from Dakar to Kinshasa, in the last couple of years. The dance -- which focuses on, though is not limited to, the surprisingly difficult act of wiggling one's buttocks without moving one's hips -- also became an endless source of discussions and newspaper ruminations on culture, sex, women and men, especially here in the Ivory Coast.

It was perhaps a measure of the fallen government's disconnection with its 16 million citizens that it tried to ban mapouka, even as the dance grew so popular that many young women desperately tried to gain weight -- the better to perform a dance that works best with an ample backside. After the military took power, it seemed that the new government's first major policy shift was directed at mapouka....

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COMMENT ABOUT MAPOUKA AND OTHER BUTT [BOOTY] SHAKING AFRICAN DANCES
From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QegcjUWuQI
"Booty dance has been gracing the land of Africa for as long as one cares to remember. Today the sights of booty dance are familiar in the west from pop to hip hop. And of course, you have Jamaican dancehall and Tahiti Ora Vahine. Back to Africa where it all began. Some call it mapouka, some kuitata, kiuno, viuno, coupé décalé etc... the booty dance is enjoyed from traditional to modern dances. It has been seen in soukous, kwasa kwasa, musiki wa dansi, Congo has been on the forefront in integrating traditional dance with booty dance, with soukous and kwasa kwasa dance styles being the most recognized vehicles. Tanzania and Kenya drew inspiration from Congo and they too integrated traditional dance into modern music....

The mapouka became popular in the nightclubs of Abidjan before catching on abroad. Congo has traditionally been the big exporter of music and dance in Africa, and so the mapouka was something of a first for the Ivory Coast."

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INFORMATION ABOUT TWERKING
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twerking
"Twerking is a "dance move that involves a person shaking their hips and bottom in a bouncy up and down motion, causing it to shake, 'wobble' and 'jiggle'."[1] and to "twerk" means to "dance in a sexually suggestive twisting fashion".[2]
Etymology
The word "twerking" is believed to be derived from one of two sources:
1.the phrase "twerk it," which in turn was created from combining "to" and "work it."

2.a portmanteau of twist and jerk.[1]

Twerking (as a modern dance) originated in New Orleans, Louisiana. Ties have been made to many traditional African dances.[3] An example of such traditional dances is Mapouka."

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FEATURED VIDEOS OF MAPOUKA
WARNING: Most videos of Mapouka and most videos of Twerking are very sexually suggestive and therefore may not be appropriate for children's viewing.

Example #1: mapouka sud

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adjapo2001, Uploaded on Sep 13, 2010

Troupe artistique " Zaossou" d'Abidjan
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My guess is that this is either the traditional way of performing Mapouka or similar to the traditional way of performing that dance.

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Example #2: [Cote d'ivoire] Les tueuses -- Ahou



missyolga, Uploaded on Jul 6, 2009
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Les Tueuses ("The Killers") are a trio of young women who helped popularized the modern, more provocative form of Mapouka, although there are dancers who perform even more provocative forms of that dance than Les Tueuses.

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Example #3: Les tueuses du mapouka - Ahou concert



saelys, Published on Aug 30, 2012

Les tueuses du mapouka - Ahou concert

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RELATED LINKS
Click http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2013/06/a-video-of-regina-by-angolan-singer.html A Video Of "Regina" by Angolan Singer Socorro & The Differences Between Traditional Angolan Dancing & Twerking

Also, click this link to find videos of traditional African dances that don't involve shaking your booty:
http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2011/12/all-african-dances-arent-about-shaking.html.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT AND THANKS
Thanks to those who are featured in these videos. Thanks also to those who are quoted in this post, and thanks to the producers and YouTube publishers of these videos.

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