In 1994, a ballroom dance program for 5th graders was implemented in New York public schools. By 2005, more than 6,000 kids from 60 schools in Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn were required to take this 10-week course. The very same year, Marilyn Agrelo directed the documentary Mad Hot Ballroom Dance (2005). The documentary tells the story of the preparation, instruction and rehearsal of various school teams for the Colors of the Rainbows final competition.
New York is one of the most multicultural states in the United States with the student population coming from different countries and backgrounds. There are Dominicans, Cubans, Puertorricans, European-Americans, African-Americans, and Asian-Americans. Through the music used in this Public School program (merengue, tango, rumba and swing), students find an outlet to their feelings, and a way to “construct their subjectivities”, as Charles Keil would suggest. Moreover, dance helps them create social bonds and a “meaningful cooperative relationships between groups”. It is through dance that, a public school become the space of alterity or paratopia; a Korean boy dances a tango with a Dominican girl, whereas a Jewish-American boy dances a merengue with an African-American girl.
In this presentation I will argue, among other things, that the ballroom dance program teaches students from different races, religions, and cultural backgrounds not only how to dance but also how to mingle and interact, thus reinforcing the possibility of a greater multicultural integration.
About the presenterFernando Valerio-Holguin
Fernando Valerio-Holguín was born in La Vega, Dominican Republic, in 1956. He holds a PhD in Hispanic Literature from Tulane University. Currently he is a Full Professor of Caribbean Literature and Culture at Colorado State University, where he won the John N. Stern Distinguished Professor Award.
Poet, fiction writer and critic, Professor Valerio-Holguín has published articles on literature, cinema, music and culture in journals and has presented papers in national and international conferences. He has been invited to lecture and red poetry at universities and institutions such as the Julian Samora Research Institute at Michigan State University, the Smithsonian Institution, the University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, Oxford University, University of Warsaw and the Library of Congress, among others.
He has published the following books: Viajantes insomnes [Sleepless Travelers] (Short story, 1982), Poética de la frialdad [Poetics of Coldness] (criticism, 1996), Autorretratos [Sel-portraits] (poetry, 2002), Memorias del último cielo [Memories of the Last Heaven] (novel, 2002), Café Insomnia [Insomnia Cafe] (Short story, 2002),Banalidad posmoderna: Ensayos sobre identidad cultural latinoamericana [Post-Modern Banality: Essays on Latin American Cultural Identity] (criticism, 2006), and Rituales de la Bella Pagana[Rituals of the Pagan Beauty (poetry, 2009). He has edited Arqueología de las sombras: La narrativa de Marcio Veloz Maggiolo [Archeology of the Shadows: Marcio Veloz Maggiolo’s Narrative] (2000), and La novela-bolero en Latinoamérica The Latin American Literary Bolero.