In 1955, the prolific Cuban scholar and ethnologist, Fernando Ortiz, claimed “dance is the principal and most enthusiastic diversion of the Cuban people, it is their most genuinely indigenous production and universal exportation.” Dance may not be the Cuban diversion, but the identification of Cuba with dance certainly surfaces in the popular imagination—most recently in Hollywood’s Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights, and decades …
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To give oneself to dance is to experience the moving body as sacred. For anyone who believes that the alienation of the body from the spirit is simply an inevitable symptom of modernity, I offer a personal challenge: are you certain you’ve danced already? But if you have and remain unconvinced, I leave you with this mini-narrative about a peculiar type of ritual popular in urban Brazil. May it inspire your thoughts for the next dance! …
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La tradición medieval y renacentista encarnada en La danza de la muerte me ha fascinado desde mi temprana adolescencia. Los esqueletos musicantes y danzantes que sacan a bailar a papas y emperadores, reinas y marquesas, labriegos y médicos, cortesanas y monjas, estas calacas que sonrientes y fiesteras los invitan a participar del último jolgorio, la postrera jarana, el parison del estribo me han tentado por más de medio siglo a …
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I like dancing, and no better dance than samba. My samba, though, always feels, as it no doubt looks, like a stilted attempt at the dance, rather than the real thing. I can recognize that in videoclips from Rio’s Sambadrome, in the street during the Carnivals of Olinda and Salvador, or when Brazilian friends dance in celebration of a World Cup victory. Real samba is a body unselfconsciously flowing in response to a syncopated beat, melding …
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Once, people of the ocean, from the coast, moved to the valley, hoping to put the Andes between them and Colombia’s decades of killing. Now, 28 of their grandchildren stood on the cusp of history. No, they danced on it. Their $2-a-week-salsa dance classes and rehearsals at Luis Carlos Caicedo’s Nueva Dimension academy on the gritty outskirts of Cali had paid off. The group of grade-schoolers and teens had scored an invitation …
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