 Le Souk Dance Company
Le Souk Dance Company, founded in 2008 by artistic director, Joette Sawall is southwest Michigan’s only professional Middle Eastern dance company. Le Souk is a premier dance company specializing in professional performance of North Africa and the Middle East along with Spanish inflections. With an advanced repertoire rarely seen in Middle Eastern dance companies the caliber of entertainment will take you on a journey of sweet aromas of hookahs and secret patios, revelers will find that 1001 nights just won't be enough. The poetic notion of Le Souk Dance Company is an authentic, enchanting experience seducing the senses with astonishing visual sway of the flowing arms and hips. One may ask, “What is a souk?” (See box at right.)
Le Souk is an extraordinary company of poetic and athletic dancers that is committed to revealing the language and art of Middle Eastern dance to adults and children alike by bridging the old with the new. Many have claimed Le Souk’s work is “dramatic,” “feminine,” “compelling,” and “breathtaking.”
The company performs in two annual series, the Sunset on the Nile in late summer and a spring concert. Le Souk, traditional to its name, showcases regional artists in the spring concert and presents works of national and international guest artists possessing diverse ethnic dance styles. The company also tours, conducting performances, lecture/ demonstrations and master classes. Le Souk Dance Company has a deeply rooted commitment to providing dance education and arts engagement programs for diverse audiences to educate the community on the beautiful art of the Middle East. For more information please contact Joette Sawall, Joette@wmschoolofmed.com or by calling 269-375-0990. Sign-up for our e-mail newsletter.
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A souk (سوق, also sook, souq, or suq) is a commercial quarter in an Arab city or a weekly market in some smaller towns where neutrality from tribal conflicts would be declared to permit the exchange of surplus goods, ideas, music, dance, and customs. Though each neighborhood within the city would have a local small souk selling food and other essentials, the main souk was one of the central structures of a large city. The souk is the central marketplace, where textiles, jewelry, spices, wooden sculptures and other valuable goods as well as the money exchanges are arranged. Traditionally it is a quadrilateral of stone-vaulted streets parallel to or crossing each other or a tight mass of buildings packed together for roads to intersect them.
In a souk, the final price of an item is reached by bargaining with the shopkeeper. All traders of a given commodity would sell in the same souk, thus ensuring a competitive market. In some African countries the souk was a place where people could come and talk, or sit down to tell stories. Many times this was done through dance and music bridging the old with the new. |
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