can Diaspora, e.g. Trisha Brown 4 with the Lindy Hop and William Forsythe 5 with Hip Hop. What can a social sphere that centers black and brown dancing bodies teach about movement that is miss- ing from the academic dance curriculums? Like the recent Dance Magazine article said, “Are college dance curriculums too white?” Amelia: Or did the white dancers and choreographers have more opportunities to access recognition and power? In contrast to more recent techniques labeled under “Somatics,” Salsa has no sin- gular founder. In that resistant, unable to be pinned down kind of way, it has no trade- mark, no Guru nor disciples. Grandmothers, aunties, uncles, and children are all practi- tioners. It is a product of social learning and practice, infor- mal learning environments, generational dissemination, migration patterns and artistic excellence toured and recorded internationally. The music was one avenue for achieving rec- ognition. For example, check out Celia Cruz and The Fania All Stars - in Zaire, Africa
ing folx from across the American continents, we unite in the bigger cities, in the nightlife, at concerts and performances. We share without restraint our passion for Salsa, Cumbia, and Reg- gaeton. At this point in my political awareness, I have no interest in nationalist identification. A nationality is not a culture. When Juan and I met at the Frankfurt University of Music and Perform- ing Arts, we saw the potential for transmitting knowledge together. Practically speaking, from where do we start? ¿Quizás la Salsa nos úne? Juan: What I remember as kinaesthetic commu- nal learning had no space in my formal dance training. As I hear in Frankfurt, “Salsa is not a concert dance.” If it is indeed just a social dance, why doesn’t the social have space in contem- porary art academia? What makes a movement practice worthy of Eurocentric eyes? And who defines that hierarchy? If it doesn’t have access to dance academia, how can this practice be taken into consideration? I don’t mean that the practice of Salsa should become standardized, because then it would turn into something else and lose its essence, la calle, el barrio, la fiesta. Yet it needs to be a subject of relevant research, otherwise Latinx and minority communities will continue to be denied cultural recognition and access to cultural participation. We can start by calling it by its name, Salsa, and not another vague label like “Latin dance.” Amelia: In the white-dominant society where we both live, Salsa is not a valid art form. It is a hobby or cultural tourism, at best ethno- musicology phenomena. Meanwhile in 1976 1 , Thomas Hanna coined “Somatics” from the Global North perspective and with it claimed heightened physical awareness, trance-like improvisation, imagery-fueled body states and embodied understandings of anatomical body systems. What if instead of practicing Somatics by lying, sitting, walking and otherwise rolling around, we danced Salsa? Juan: A movement practice that emerged in the 60’s and 70’s in brown and black com- munities in New York City with strong roots in Afro-Caribbean culture, “in particular the son-guaguancó 2 ,” Salsa has evolved outside the “concert stages.” Yes, it is a social dance, with few mentions aside from recent publications 3 in Dance Studies and Latin Studies, perhaps because of the marginalization of immigrant, Latino communities in white supremacy cul- ture and the misconception of African Diaspora dances as “too sexual” or inappropriate. Amelia: That makes me wonder, why does the academic institution refuse Salsa, yet defend the European social dances adopted by classical ballet techniques in their cannon? Could it be like you say, the profanity of the tail wagging, pleasureful perreo misclassified as a “court- ship dance?” Then why do grandparents dance Salsa? Why do children? Aren’t we past this? Juan: History tells that choreographers have been influenced by social dances from the Afri-
THERE IS A MATCH WHEN SALSA SWIPES
RIGHT ON SOMATICS,
By JUAN URBINA AND AMELIA UZATEGUI BONILLA
Juan: “Trucupey,” my dad used to call to get my attention. The nickname referred to a Salsa song, Juancito Trucupey . At family gath- erings, as I began to walk I also observed how my parents stepped to the Salsa rhythms: sudden, con- tained, and joyful. When I was 10, I went to Cuba and learned to improvise Salsa movements socially in Old Havana’s Malecón . It was the Cuban Carnival. Celia Cruz was still alive and releasing hits like La Vida es un Carnaval . When I want to express my embod- ied childhood memories and iden- tity, I return to these moments. Amelia: La salsa se bailaba en mi casa desde que tengo edad para con- tarlo . I learned by following. The dance was already happening, at birthday parties, after baptisms, y en las Quinceñeras . As a young adult, I was introduced to NYC’s Span- ish Harlem underground concerts. During the summers, Abuelitos danced on the sidewalk outside El Museo del Barrio. Heading further south and dancing at the weekend descargas in downtown Lima, my
“ “For me, it is all about the instrumental descarga section where one can dance like mad, crying while laughing, making fun with ecstatic rhythmic possession." — AMELIA UZATEGUI BONILLA their athletic capacities in this dance, I wonder if another movement ghetto was created? In the same way that practices such as clas- sical ballet have developed in elite and ableist environments, I would say that the Salsa field marginalises disabled and queer cultures and limits the forms of expression. Today, I recog- nise that Salsa both enacts ableism and receives cultural racism. It is not considered an art like ballet. And it still pre-establishes itself as exclu- sive to certain bodies. How can a queer or dis- abled person move within the circles of this
Amelia Uzategui Bonilla
1974 6 on Youtube. As a result of these artists, who in the world in 2020 hasn’t heard of Salsa? But to box something up, to limit it because of its seeming simplicity or commercialization without even trying to understand the polycen- tric and the polyrhythmic outside of the West- ern music framework is nothing less than a form of cultural racism 7 . No one questions the historical significance of Bach. From my per- spective, the roots of Salsa are my body’s Bach. Juan: Mind you, it is not simple to dance Salsa, nor any other movement practice with African roots, nor any other dance technique, period. Each develops different skills. We have to recog- nize that Salsa requires social learning, kinaes- thetic empathy, coordination, and an ability to let loose. Yet, has this dance also suffered from ableism? The complex patterns that require embodiment of polycentric coordination are difficult for most able-bodied people. Then what of disabled bod- ies? This complexity may have contributed to misinterpretation in the scientific movement realm, still unable or unwilling to study it in depth. Since this dance emerged in a place that searched to strengthen the Latino immigrant identity in marginalized communities, primar- ily a hetero dominated one, it left little space for different dancing expressions. As mostly Cis- gender Latinos, African Americans or able-bod- ied white people gained recognition by showing
Juan Urbina
WHAT IF THE DIGITAL SPACE COULD BE A REPRIEVE , an alternate reality for post- colonial dance research? Perhaps now, without institutional demands, brown per- spectives can be rearticulated. What follows is a conversation between two Latinx dancers and educators. They are recent graduates from the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts’s MA in contemporary dance education. They both moved to Frankfurt, Germany for the program two years ago. During the COVID-19 shut- down, they choose to co-teach, turning their prior conversations as researchers into a shared online practice. Their first class was on March 18th. Since then, they teach six days a week. Their continued inquiry has led them towards the recognition of a shared practice they have both experienced since childhood, Salsa. In spite of their memories with Salsa, this is not a technique they have studied or researched for- mally. Born into vernacular traditions, they both went on to receive Western dance training. During the pandemic, they have the opportunity to work in a third interval.
Nuyorican and Limeñan influences converged, un poquito de aquí, un poquito desde allá.
Juan: Hearing this music, I developed an ear that moves me off the down-beat, responding to the music and making my own rhythmic compo- sition at the same time. I can distance from it yet I can become it. It’s a contradiction that sets me free from rhythms and patterns while simulta- neously dancing to them. Contrapunteando the down-beat with the up-beat. Feeling the empty spaces, the punches, and the unaccented notes. Amelia: For me, it is all about the instrumental descarga section where one can dance like mad, crying while laughing, making fun with ecstatic rhythmic possession. Living in diaspora, meet-
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u n i f y s t r e n g t h e n amp l i f y u n i f y s t r e n g t h e n a p l i f y u n i f y s t r e n g t h e n a p l i f y u n i f y s t r e n g t h e n a p l i f y
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