Mimane has been preoccupied with street dancing, and, later on, running a dance studio, Dangsters(Dance+Gangster), as a French manager in Kunming. He used to show hip pop magic in the staging, and now, he still owns the stage yet featuring an ambitious manager.
Lynn, reporter from InKunming, met with Mimane and his dance crew on April 15. Grinning, his truthful face shows genuine warmth. He talked about his tie with Dangster and the upcoming dance show "FENG SHUI" this Saturday night at Kunming Theatre.
Back Story
Mimane came to a college to study international trade as an exchange student in 2007. He met members of Dangerster at a book bar. "Lively, they are ardent lovers of dancing. I am also fond of dancing and then learn from them, since they are really wonderful," said he. Mimane became the manger of the dance group after graduation in 2009 and has been striving for finding out more opportunities for dancers to define themselves, such as tours abroad and foreign instructors’ guidances.
Breakthrough
He has been rubbing shoulders with six glamorous gals who swept to the top of KOD (Keep On Dancing), a nation-wide street dance in China in 2009. These girls, together with a boy, bucked the trend and impressed the panel by wearing provocative outfits and moving on 4 inch high heels, describing it as challenging, while Dufei, lead dancer of the group said: "Exciting. We do it just because no one did it before."
Last December, Mimane "conspired" a flash mob of horse riding dance at downtown Shuncheng Shopping Center with nearly 80 dancers. A 5min 2sec video was shot, which turned out to be a meteoric rise among a legion of local dancing enthusiasts, and earned them a strong end to 2012.
Three dancers from Dangster will present a show FENGSHUI with three boys of French METAMORPHOZ Dance. It is an opening show for Chinese-French dance show this year. Directed by Mohamed Rouabah, a sophisticated dancing choreographer from Firminy, the presentation is coupled with Yunnan minority culture and distinctly stylish vibe of modern city.
The dance is a story about rediscovery of roots affected by Chinese culture. Three urban western boys were always controlling their emotions, but luckily they rediscovered themselves. After encountering with the Chinese girls, they had a better understanding of their roots. Finally, they lived a better life.
The attention will be garnered by its modern soulful change of the urban boys as well as parts of traditional Yunnan ethnic dancing. Later they will have a tour in cities of both China and France.
Dancing does not seem like something serious in Kunming
Kunming enjoys long history, but street dance is not a genre that has grown in popularity here.
"There are not so many cultural events in this city as that in Shanghai and Guangzhou. We are trying to push the dancing culture here, trying to make it into something big and make people dance more. Say dancing, maybe it's more like entertainment in bars, but not really like something serious that you can make a real artistic performance with it. In general, Chinese people are not so keen on dancing. The dancing culture is not that popular, especially for street dance."
Mimane introduced that the cultural atmosphere in France is quite different from here. As government subsidizes a lot on culture. Opening a dance studio, present artistic performances and joining in dance festivals are comparatively easy. Here in Kunming, Dangsters make a living by commercial performances, teaching as well as making more collaboration with foreign countries, such as France and Singapore.
"But Kunming is a potential city," he said that it gives an unmistakable strength of developing dance projects.
(Editor:Lynn)
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