Description
We welcome everyone to the Mapalé Expression Choreography Workshop and Folkloric Show. Come and experience how the body understands one of our most important traditional dances, representing rebellion, resistance and freedom. Come and be part of this ritual where we heal and honour our ancestors at the frenetic and liberating pace of Mapalé!
Somos Chibchas Arts is a dance school based in London that arises from the desire of migrants to show and preserve the beautiful culture that they leave when they cross the ocean, with the aim of investigating, preserving and practising
Colombian culture and traditional dances.
Somos Chibchas offers a space for communication between various cultural groups, using the arts as the main tool for exploration, self-knowledge and social recognition, focusing on the strengthening and visibility of their community in London.
Their mission is to show and share Colombian and Latin American culture and folklore through ancestral artistic traditions composed of, and influenced by Indigenous heritage and the African diaspora, as a way of preserving their ancestral
legacy.
About the dance:
‘Mapalé’ is one of the most representative dance and musical genres of Colombia and one with the longest history. It is an Afro-Colombian dance that emerged on the Colombian Caribbean coast thanks to the cultural influence of enslaved Africans who were trafficked during the invasion of the Americas.
Mapalé represents to an extent the fusion of this diversity of cultures and above all an expression of rebellion and resistance. Its movements and music express an instinctive reaction to the horrific slavery conditions. Mapalé was a way of preserving their own culture and transmitting it to the following generations.
Instagram: @somoschibchaslondon
Taty Tambo
(@taty_tambo_colombia), AfroColombian musician, percussionist and Ethnomusicologist, specialising in Bullerengue and Cumbia, as well as many other Afro Latin rhythms.
She has more than 20 years experience in the development and investigation in Colombian Folk music. Nowadays she gives Bullerengue, Cumbia and percussion workshops and private classes internationally.
She is a designer and luthier of traditional instruments used to play these ancestral rhythms. These instruments include the three main drums: Alegre(the drum of happiness), Llamador (Caller drum or folkloric heartbeat) and Tambora or Bombo (a the two-sided larger drum which sustains the beats and offbeats).