Dance Rant

This one is actually long so TLDR I joined a local dance studio to continue dancing salsa and bachata here and it was hard to transition to the Santiago, D.R. dance scene because of homophobic, sexist, and restrictive methods of teaching. Upon reflection, that might be my American showing.

Background

I have been dancing in classrooms for 11 years. I have never gotten the opportunity to speak on it extensively before but if you know me, you know that I am a dancer and it's my favorite thing to do. I mean, look at the joy:

Smith College Fall Faculty Dance 2019

Dance is as open to interpretation as art (sometimes) and so I have been fortunate to have been exposed to many styles and many teachers. I went to high school at Fordham High School for the Arts in the Bronx and majored in dance. This is a public school for inner city kids, and so we weren't Julliard-trained but with a good combination of students that cared and teachers that cared you could get serious dance training. I learned ballet, several contemporary styles, jazz and musical theater dance. It was classic training although not very rigorous because class had to fit both students who had never seen a dance studio before and those who have been dancing at a professional studio since they were four.

At Smith, as a dance major we also had ballet and contemporary and rigor, in addition to learning anatomy, history, music, film-making and production of a show. I was also very lucky to be there when there was three levels of West African and Hip Hop. Although rigorous, the definition of dance class was so open that we once spent a 45-minute contemporary class talking about the anatomy of the foot, massaging our feet and thanking them for supporting us through all the movement. This is very much distant from high school. It was also the first time I heard of Improvisation and Contact Improvisation as dance genres. College was the most 'liberal' dance experience I had.

If you notice, I didn't see the genres I learned at home in classrooms yet. You won't find 3 levels of merengue, bachata, and salsa classes at your usual college. Once you step out of academia, you find the levels of mostly just bachata and salsa. Therefore when I left college I went looking for those genres in a classroom setting and found many in the city that taught in a 'this is the right way to do it' way rather then 'let's explore the movement' way. No one is touching their feet in any salsa class in NYC. I think that what I learned in college about the fascia, the bones on the feet, the quality of movement are all valuable pieces of information that can inform all dance styles but the focus was, 'how may times can a person be spun', 'can we lift them into a split afterwards', and 'how can we execute this choreography perfectly'. Although competitions, performances, and social media all exist in all dance styles and absolutely have their place in it, they unfortunately overwhelmingly inform how Latin dance styles are taught in my experience thus far. This means that there's a lack of exposure to their history, instrumentation, and exploration beyond traditional movement, whatever that may be. I was looking for something in between rigorous training and what I experienced at Smith.

Because it is NYC you will find a little bit of everything if you go look for it. In June of last year I joined AND Formation, a traditional bachata training group in NYC led by Desiree Godsell and Alex. These professional dancers train others to be teachers and I was happy to find that not only do they talk about history and instrumentation, they even have trips to the D.R. so that people can experience the dance in the place where it originated. They also find value in teaching the baseline body movement, rhythm, and hold discussions with students about what 'traditional' means and how the dance has evolved. The discussions also extend to speaking about etiquette and safety when dancing socially, and how we should break from 'women' vs 'men' and more 'lead' or 'follow' allowing for a deeper understanding of those roles and normalizing couples of any gender representation on the dance floor.

It was truly the perfect marriage of rigor and 'this is what the formula for the movement is' and 'now that you know that how can we explore within that to change the movement intentionally pulling into it our other dance experiences' and 'how do we place this dance in the context of society'. They also have an amazing performance group, and trust that they are absolutely executing choreography perfectly and are amazing performers to watch. Yet the ultimate goal is to build community with Bachata lovers and enthusiasts and there's space for everyone there.

Dancing in D.R.

Why is this conversation coming up for me while completing my fulbright in DR? Well, I joined a local dance studio to continue my practice and recoiled at some of the instructions:

"If you do the step like this, you'll look like a man and it'll seem like there's two men dancing" (and that's bad)

"The girls have to do it like this and the men have to do it like this"

"As a girl you have to move your hands like this over your body"

"This looks ugly"

"You have to tug at the girl like this if she's not recognizing that you want her to turn"

All in addition to not teaching body movement in order to keep the rhythm but yelling "YOU HAVE TO COUNT" if you didn't manage to keep the rhythm. Trust me, asking people to count is not the answer, because guess what, if you can't count on rhythm then you're not on rhythm! It's silly and not beginner friendly. Sure, this system is creating beautiful showy dancers for their performance group and with those that can keep up, they look amazing. It's certainly not the most helpful to new joiners. Worst of all, it creates dancers with a superiority complex who think there's only one way to dance. You don't understand the deep anger and confusion I experienced when a man that has been going to this school for a long time was forcefully moving me around and COUNTING THE MUSIC FOR ME.

I have to laugh. I am not a professional dancer, I am not the best out there by any means, or a salsa connoisseur, but I assure you, I'm on beat. I have a dancer's intuition for rhythm and following other's movement when dancing together, not to mention 11 years of it all. Let's say I don't have any of those things, there's still a kind way to count for yourself such that I can hear you and a kind way to offer movement to your follow as a lead. What was actually happening is that in salsa you usually count the steps as 123 pause 567, and as a dancer I choose to flow through the pause instead of completely stopping the movement. In this studio they stop moving. That's all. It's a choice, and I am happy to follow that choice for my time here, I just won't accept being told I'm not dancing right for choosing to do otherwise. Doing research for this post I found a prime example of what I'm talking about.

This is the academy's Instagram account. In this video the teacher is showing how to do a salsa step called 'The 70' in addition to the step 'Exhibit Her'. The dancer is from the performance group at the school and therefore already knows how to do the step. You can see that there's an unnecessary forceful pull here and there and the user @gerardimaurizio commented "A question... why pull the dancer so much?". The user @rosie.noel replied "I'd like to know the same thing" also wondering the need for force. One of the female student's from the academy came to the school's defense and replied "that's the way to do it, that is correct". See my point? Judge for yourself weather you believe the dancer is being pulled around more than necessary but it definitely shows that the culture you build in these classrooms follows these dancers wherever they go.

After that first day of class I was at a crossroads:

A) Never come back!

B) Stay and tell them off! Be the change you want to see in the world!!!

C) Stay and see what happens?

Conclusion

I chose C. From a certain point of view, I am not from here. I am a Dominican-American fulbrighter who came to this studio to learn, exercise and build community. Although it was hard to see in the first hour of being there, I absolutely believe there's something to learn here, and ways in which I can grow as a dancer by experiencing their style of teaching. Since I joined the school I am more comfortable dancing salsa with a partner than before, and have learned a great deal about what options I have for my arms while dancing. Given the opportunity or an opening to do some cultural exchanging of sorts, I will be more than happy to talk about what my experience has been as someone who has been dancing in the states.

I recognize that nothing I experience as negative in this classroom is with that intention. Most of it is simply a cultural difference, and some of it is their goal as an institution. If the focus is creating beautiful stage dancers, that's great. If the goal is to make a welcoming space for total beginners, I have some suggestions lol. If the goal is to work on gender disparity or homophobia in the dance world, I also have some thoughts lol but again this is not my institution and I am not entirely sure what their goals are. They have a wall of awards, a renowned professional dancer as a teacher, tons of accolades as an institution, and happy students so one could argue I, as an American, am the problem along with my liberal expectations? Is it me, Jesus?

Thanks for coming to my ted talk. Bonus video if you made it this far: