This Could Go Nowhere

I tried keeping my first blog when I was 17 and studying abroad in Africa...I was very inconsistent with it. For similar reasons, I haven't told anyone that this exists. But, I think I have a story I could tell and even if my only audience is myself, so I'm going to tell it.

I started dancing when I was a child - my parents found a small traditional Chilean dance group (all girls, about 5 of us) and I cannot lie, some adorable home videos resulted. I was 4 and the rest of the girls were about 11-15. This stint didn't last long, and a whole decade passed before I started dancing again. Similarly, we learned Chilean Folk Dances. I stuck with this group throughout high school, but my attendance was spotty throughout University. In my defense, I had discovered the joy of traveling and was not home very often.

Let me take a few steps back first: at 17 I volunteered abroad in Kenya. At the end of the program the students put together a talent show. For my piece, I danced the Cacharpaya, a dance with indigenous roots. They lyrics tell of the ending of Carnival, a popular festival found all over the world, and the at the end of the song, the movements mimic a gathering of dirt as an offering to Pachamama, Mother Earth. My personal interpretation is that we are appreciating the bountiful crops that allow such festivity to take place, and is a plea to higher beings to bring back similar fortune in the upcoming year. We were in Kenya during a summer drought but the day after I danced...it poured.

That same year I studied abroad in Bamako, Mali. My juvenile blog from that time still exists, as some sort of reminder to myself to do better. I attended a local school, spoke French with my host family and classmates, and met up with my fellow program mates to learn more about Malian culture. On one such excursion, we visited a dance school and tried our hand at traditional dances. That's really all I can say about that experience: it was a single day and so long ago, I'm surprised I remember it happened at all.

Continuing with our normal timeline, in college I studied abroad in Spain and Jordan. In Spain, I met a girl who started ballet when she was about 15 years old but that didn't stop her from mastering point shoes. She was a late bloomer and she inspired me to take classes and learn other dance forms. Together we enrolled at a local dance school and took salsa together. I also tried a ballet class. Having a friend helped me go to a few classes, but I had no prior "studio" experience and my ballet class was filled with younger kids. I only took one ballet class, and maybe 3 or 4 salsa classes. Still, I was invigorated.

Throughout college, I could tell I loved dancing, but I was terrified of putting myself out there. I took a couple of hip hop classes but lost my nerve and didn't go back. One night, a friend dragged me to a collegiate Salsa Social. There was no choreography to learn, you just needed to know the basic step and you were free to fool around with your partner. This was how I'd grown up dancing at social parties. That night, I unlocked my natural rhythm and grew a little more confident about my dance abilities. That I met a cute boy who's passion was also dancing may have helped (side note: we dated for 6 months). Still, my shell remained intact. 

In fact, it wasn't until after college that I broke out of my shell. I found a couple of studios with basic classes. Classes that started from the very beginning for adults who've never stepped onto dance floors before (my folklore group, being an indie group, met at houses and community centers. We rarely got to dance with any mirrors). When I finished the series (about 10 classes), I took myself on a mini-vacation to Vancouver, BC. For 5 days, I took back-to-back classes in as many genres as possible where no one knew who I was or cared. And from there, I exploded onto the dance scene. I took hip hop classes, ballet classes, attended salsa and bachata socials, and joined a Polynesian dance troupe. I danced to the point of exhaustion. 

I had to scale myself back, and chose to focus on Polynesian styles. For the past two years, I have been learning about an entire culture and learning new languages through my dance practices. Which is what inspired this blog, really. I've studied, performed, and now even competed in Ori Tahiti (Tahitian dance) and to a lesser extent Hula. This genre deserves an entire blog post of its own, if not two. 

I will wrap up my story by sharing that in spring 2018, I got to travel to my other homeland, Costa Rica. My cousins, true to our giving Tico culture, enrolled me in a private lesson in our traditional folk dances. My heart was so full with the love for my own heritage. This summer, August 2019, I will be traveling to Czech Republic to live abroad for a whole year (my first year long travel!). My goal is to, like in Canada, fill my schedule with dances of all kinds. I particularly want to try out bellydancing, which seems to be pretty popular in Eastern Europe. Of course, I'll go back to hip hop and ballet. I am absolute pants at practicing on my own, but I don't want to lose any of the hard work I've put into Ori Tahiti and Hula Kahiko so I'll of course be keeping up with the dance forms on my own.

I hope to have more stories to share on here! 

Chaito, Andrea XX

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