Transcultural Fusion

Mahina’s Transcultural Fusion style blends FCBD® moves with Transcultural Fusion (formerly Tribal Fusion) fundamentals and is influenced by her early oriental bellydance training. Mahina is known for her fondness of dancing to heavy metal and rock music, and she often uses Transcultural Fusion to express her darker side; although this sometimes backfires because it is difficult to project the energy of a scary demon or monster when you are grinning like an idiot because you are enjoying yourself so much! 

She began regular training in Transcultural Fusion with Dud Muurmand, in Copenhagen in 2011, and trained with Tigerlily while living in Edinburgh. She has attended workshops and intensives with some of the world's best Tribal Fusion dancers, including Jill Parker, Deb Rubin, Samantha Emanuel, Ariellah, Kami Liddle, Sharon Kihara and Alexis Southall.

After leaving Denmark, Mahina founded Tribal Rocks - an international Transcultural Fusion Troupe that creates FCBD®  inspired Tribal Fusion dances to heavy metal and rock music.

Why are you calling this Transcultural Fusion and not Tribal Fusion?

This (difficult to define) dance form was called "Tribal Fusion" for decades. It evolved from FCBD®  Style as dancers wanted to bring in more personalisation and emotional expression. Back then, FCBD® Style was known as American Tribal Style®, or ATS®, and so the name "Tribal Fusion" became a way of honouring the ATS® roots of the dance form. Over the last few years, the dance community has been working really hard to address racism, colonialism, and inappropriate cultural appropriation within the dance community and the dance form itself. A big part of this has been exploring the meaning and impact of the terms we use. The term "tribal" comes with a whole host of issues, ranging from cultural appropriation through to micro-aggressive exoticism and othering of existing tribal cultures.  So, many members of the dance community are redefining the words and terms they use to describe their dance. Winds of the Moon have a great article summarising  the history and many of the issues.

Photos by Nils Djervad and Kinne Basset Photo