American Tribal Style (ATS®) is a celebration of the female spirit and a physical display of the strength and beauty of women.  This powerful and dynamic group dance takes its’ influences from the secular entertainments that evolved as the Romany travelled through the Middle East, India, Spain, North Africa and Central Asia.  

The basis of ATS is a common vocabulary of dance steps and cues enabling an improvisational style of dance.  One of the most entrancing aspects is the synchronicity of the dancers, moving as one, yet retaining their individual characteristics.

The music tends towards earthy, folkloric Arabic rhythms with many melodic instruments offering the dancer expression from the frenetically fast into the mysterious slow.

The costume is made up from many traditional pieces - although they are not region-specific or worn traditionally - it is lush, rich, full of layered texture and colour making any woman’s body shape look regal.

Carolena Nericcio of FatChanceBellydance® www.fcbd.com in San Francisco is the innovator of ATS - a name that distances itself from classical styles of bellydance. The words “American” make it clearly an American invention and “tribal style” indicates a group of dancers working collectively with a “tribal” look and feel. It’s the unique strength of the tribal group of women dancing as one, along with the individual strengths of it’s members, that showcases ATS to be an empowering, graceful and dynamic group dance.   

FatChanceBellyDance, FCBD, ATS and American Tribal Style, are federally registered trademarks of FatChanceBellyDance, Inc. For more information, please visit www.fcbd.com/about/legal.shtml.

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