BACK TO OUR BASIC VALUES...
The understanding of how Afro-Latin dance is perceived and how its practitioners have felt during the last 20 odd years delivering these forms in the UK is more complex than I initially imagined.
There are so many threads to the complexity of aesthetic appreciation and knowledge of one's own cultural background when it comes to Afro-Latin dance. What you may think is a clear and straight forward opinion may be charged with subconscious bias, media influence and other environmental pressures. Recognizing it is the first step towards an equal society we know, but how do we recognize it?... We are far more influenced on a daily basis from the media than we fully realize. Recognizing inequalities and making changes is a conscious effort that most are not conscious enough to realize we need to make, so, if you don't know that you don't know, you're not likely to change.
It goes back to basics. What do we value?... What do Afro-Latin dance practitioners value individually or as a group?... How does their value system affect or interacts with the value systems of the spaces they inhabit?....
(photo by Tyrone Domingo)
Many personal perceptions are often stereotypes we've grown up accepting. Take Afro-Latin dance. Most people, when they think of these forms, think mostly of social dances: Salsa, Afro-Cuban, Kizomba...Prof. Raquel Monroe from Dance Center of Columbia USA also agrees. Why don't we think of Afro-Latin Dance in terms of concert dance or being experimental?...(Molzahn, 2021)
What I've encountered in my research, seems to go right back to identifying our basic values. How value systems change how we see ourselves and others and how the intersection of global cultures sharing the same spaces provide an opportunity to share our values or facilitate the dismantling of non-dominant cultures. OK, that was a little feeling of doom, but you get the gist.
1) Molzahn, L., 2021. Globe-trotting with Dance Center's Afro-Latin@ events. [online] chicagotribune.com. Available at: <https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/theater/ct--afro-latindad-dance-card-story.html> [Accessed 23 March 2021].
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