STUCK In her first work as a choreographer, international whacking icon Mounia Nassangar explores the ability of dance to take over from speech when words are stuck
ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE Waacking, originally written “Whacking” has its roots in the 1970s in Los Angeles as a dance style of the LGBTQ disco scene. At a time when queer people were predominantly invisible and stigmatised, waacking offered them a platform for expression and visibility. The style developed from so-called punking, a reinterpretation of the pejorative term ‘punk’, and is characterised by dynamic, accentuated arm movements to the beat of the music. In STUCK, five dancers approach waacking in their own individual way, with the urgency of dance and expression that resists all oppression. In STUCK, dance becomes a means of transforming inner and outer constraints into freedom and self-determination and transcending language.
ABOUT MOUNIA NASSANGAR A leading figure in whacking in France and internationally, Mounia Nassangar is a choreographer, dancer, actress, model, DJ, event producer and director of her own dance company. Dancing since the age of 5, she went through popping, locking, new style, house dance, dancehall and street jazz before specializing in whacking.In 2018, Mounia was revealed to the general public thanks to Jean-Paul Gaultier’s touching Fashion Freak Show at the Folies Bergère and Gaspar Noé’s film Climax, which won an award at the Directors’ Fortnight at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival.