Dance, Dance Revolution
Detangling Bodies and Minds from the Barriers and Borders of the Past
Entering the makeshift ballroom, a sort of outdoor patio with the same red clay tiled floor that adorns the majority of the UGA Costa Rica campus, you can feel the nervous anticipation. Twenty-one bailarines, an eclectic mix of English and Forestry students with equally extensive backgrounds, circumnavigate the room, doing anything to avoid the invisible borders that mark off the center of the dance floor. As we wait with some excitement, largely shadowed by our pervasive awkwardness, Geovanney Rodriguez Cruz, a 29-year-old native of Montaverde, glides into the room. Ignoring the borders that keep us away from the center, he is straight-forward, confident in both the Spanish language and the language he is about to teach — bailar. He and Danielle Schwartz, an American naturalist living on the campus, walk with a subtle bounce. Geovanney turns on the music, a lively Costa Rican tune with a one-two beat pattern, and the restraints fueled by our awkwardness subside. A small dance circle forms, the worst artifact of white American culture, and people begin to ease into place, attempting to move hips that have lain rigid since Columbus. After a few minutes, Geovanney enters the circle to end the embarrassment; the dance lesson is about to begin.
Pura Vida
Upon first arriving at the campus in San Luis, Costa Rica, my eyes were immediately drawn to the natural Teak wood buildings and the solar-paneled water heaters perched on top of the roofs. A green mesh surrounds a red tin roof, which we would later learn houses one of the two bio-digesters on campus. These effectively eliminate any waste from the campus. The leftover food from lunch is given to the pigs, which turn it into their own form of waste. That, combined with our own natural waste then sits in one of the two bloated bags that form the bio-digester. After a few days, natural enzymes break down the waste, and the resultant methane gas and water, which we are told is 99.99% pure, goes back into the kitchen to cook our food. The cycle is complete. Or so it seems. Our part in this system, made obvious by the reading of the Earth Charter, requires us to transplant the sustainability found here, and take it with us, on the plane, across the borders, through customs, and back into our daily lives in Athens, Georgia, as well as wherever we end up in the future. It sounds beautiful and you can imagine the trees bending and swaying in agreement; A gospel choir echoing the words of their pastor. My skepticism starts here.
Costa Rica is a country founded on an intimate relationship with the land. At one point the poorest of the Spanish Colonies in Central America, the settlers who braved the Atlantic were not arriving with dreams of grandeur or excess. They willfully trudge through the hills and mountains of a drenched territory to find a small plot of land, start a small farm, and begin their small, but overwhelmingly meaningful lives.
America, on the contrary, began as an experiment of freedom. First as religious freedom, which then transitioned into representational freedom. The land of America echoed the ideals of John Locke and reminded the settlers each day that they were free to grow their dreams as large as they wanted. A whisper that became clearer with James Polk’s proclamation of Manifest Destiny. The West was ours. The freedom to claim it morphed into our duty to conquer it. American greed, with all its gifts and grievances, was born.
The task of smuggling sustainability back through our borders looms ahead. While it works flawlessly here in Costa Rica, the ground, comprised of its culture and history, is far more fertile than America’s. The houses, small, simple, and riddled with gaps for nature, including insects, to find their way welcomed into the home, tell of a distinctly different lifestyle from America. Success and Happiness are not measured by the square-footage of a house or whether or not your counter-top is granite or marble. Inside the home of Doña Marielos for a cooking lesson, her smile speaks to their view of happiness as she watches on with swelling pride as her son Kevin teaches us how to cook Champalas, a local dish with the ingredients originating in their backyard. A similar smile, dotted by laughter at my inability to shake my chest or perhaps Orrin’s distinctly American geriatric shuffle, grows on Geovanney’s face as he prepares to teach yet another group of foreigners how to dance the Merengue and the Cumbia.
“Dance is a Language, it has the same intonations and tones as any other language.The only difference is that one is spoken, while the other is felt.”
Geovanney articulates the steps through muddled English with the precision that only comes from someone who has once been a student. “I learned to dance when I was only 2, my Mama told me,” says Geovanney, “We all did, by watching our Dads and dancing with our Mothers.” Dancing is passed on, like cooking, at a very early age, from generation to generation. It is taught by the parents and cultivated by the surrounding community. We would go down to Santa Elena for the big dances. That’s how we met people, mostly girls,” Geovanney tells me with a boyish grin. A grin that has still not left his face after twenty minutes of muddling his favorite dance, the Merengue.
As I gain confidence in my footwork, I notice the height difference between Jorden Wade, a 6’3” tree and Jordan Elliott, a 5-foot English major whose feisty personality matches those of the ticas. The gap between their heads seems to be eliminated by their short moments of fluent dancing. Orrin and Jaydin fluently transition from the Merengue to Swing Dancing and back again just before Geovanney glances over his shoulder to check on the progress of the class. Geovanney does so in perfect rhythm and step, effortlessly leading Danielle, who comes from a background in Dance, around the Costa Rican dancehall.
“Dance is a language,” Danielle tells me, “It has the same intonations and tones as any other language. The only difference is that one is spoken, while the other is felt.” The physical nature of dance allows for this language to transcend borders, barriers, and differences. No matter which continent or language you find yourself immersed in, a body is a body, a smile is a smile.
The burgeoning laughter and increased twirls mark the growing unity of the group, now imbedded in the language of Dance. My partner, Vesselina Kotzeva, who grew up in Pazardjik, Bulgaria before moving to the United States, moves easily through the complex spins of the Cumbia and the Merengue, a slight hint that something more hides beneath the surface. Her slightly Hispanic accent and fluidity on the dance floor reveals the origins of her roommates: Honduras, El Salvador, Mexico, and Columbia. Vesselina’s composite mirrors the collaged background of the dance itself.
The Cumbia originates in Colombia, but maintains strong ties to the African drumming beats brought over by the slaves working on Cuban sugar cane farms. The dance then immigrated into Costa Rica, where it has been paired to Costa Rican music known for its excitement and bounce. This history accounts for the footwork of the Cumbia, which is known for being much more lively and energetic, featuring hops and bounces, compared to the sexy suave of the neighboring Salsa. The Cumbia and the Merengue’s intricate swings and spins pirate moves straight out of the Lindy Hop and the Jive. These dances, made famous in Harlem dance clubs and popularized by the African-Americans living in New York, draw from an extensive background of African dancing and rhythms, as well as Western ballroom dances such as the foxtrot. Dance, especially those of Central America, has become on its own a melting pot.
Reprise
As we transition from the Merengue to the Cumbia, the pride of Costa Rica, the nervous anticipation that sequestered the room in the beginning is nowhere to be found. The naturalists working on the campus, hailing from all parts of the globe, return to the innocent laughter and poking of schoolgirls, waiting for Geovanney to once again take their hand into the music and into the dance.
Those of us growing tired of the constant upbeat bouncing of the Cumbia begin to sloppily transition into forms of Hip-Hop dance, while the more daring slide back into the elaborate knot of the Merengué. As we look across the dance floor, once barred by the borders and barriers between us, it now looks bare; a clean slate, open for any who are willing to enter into the universal language of Dance.
As we exit the dance hall, I am reminded that it is but a red tin roofed building amongst the few that dot the Costa Rican mountainside. I look down through the growing mist across the campus and my eyes rest on the lone red tin roof at the bottom. Behind the green mesh curtain lies the bio digester, the pride of the campus. I’m reminded about my initial duty here. Maybe crossing the borders into America’s melting pot with looser hips and looser minds won’t be so impossible after all.
