The pictures seem like an insult with their inability to capture an iota of the music, the dancing, the energy of the night. I was supposed to go try the Rugby club, but my friend Anyelo told me he wanted to go see his friends’ dance. There is an international symposium on this certain type of tropical fruit being held at the university (or the U as the kids call it), and they had a cultural night featuring the students representation of their countries.
I have been so busy here discovering. And a bit negligent as well. I should have told you about my classes, my language and culture adventures or my experience working the farm and cutting King’s Grass with my machete, but I’m not going as of yet. I am tired and need to go bed so I can get up at 5a tomorrow, but this seems so much more important. I don’t know if my babbling will mean anything without you being able to experience it, but I would feel as if I was depriving you if I did not.
I went from impressed to spellbound in a matter of moments. It was like seeing a truly great piece of art played out before my eyes. All the words I want to use are typically denigrated to the realm of hyperbole or cliché, but I will use them unabashedly.
The night opened with a lively student MC working the crowd and introducing the performers. First on stage were two Ecuadorians, one of whom is my new friend Federico (Fede has quite a talent with the guitar). One was playing the guitar and the other a ukulele. The instruments and singing were very good, but nothing to write home about.
Next came Bolivia with its flashy, intricate, ornate, but not gaudy, and not in the least ostentatious costumes. The golds and blacks glimmering in the stage light. His vestment was the skinned hide of fiery red Chinese parade dragoon. And they leaped and they danced and they shook their bells and stomped their golden moccasins. It was only towards the end of the dance that I realized that I knew her, I was so enthralled in the display that I did not see my class mate but this wild grinned Boliviana in all the finery of her regalia.
An Argentinean and her Ecuadorian partner did want might have been the Tango. It was certainly provocative, but not sensual.
Then came the Peruvians. The Peruvians with their rainbow patterns on red and black. They twirled to their music that skipped as a rock across a flowing stream. They twisted, embraced, disjoined and jumped whilst standing without going anywhere. The dance was not complicated, but it had majesty in its simplicity, its vigor. There were 2 men and 2 ladies. They weaved throughout each other always finding and still seeking a new partner. I had had class with three of them this morning, and knew the last girl from a Christian group on campus. But they had transformed. It was what I imagine an electron looks like to God. The colors, the spinning, the certain destination of everywhere and no where at once.
Ecuador followed Peru in quick succession. Their dance was a story, not just because their enchanting music told you what to feel, but because the actors played their parts so decisively and with such joy. A clearing of shrouded women hunched together in black and white as the men returned home in their white shirts, black trousers, and straw hats from some task afield. But once their eyes met, the dance had begun. The black shrouds were thrown open to reveal a kaleidoscope of fine embroidery. The men tipped their hats as they grabbed their partners. They formed lines and called each other without words. Finally, a moving circle formed with a roof made of color. The women bobbed as their men weaved throughout them. My skin was tingling. I knew these my classmates, but I could not see them. They were such fervent emissaries of their home, that they had drug me there to show me its splendor. I knew they had only just been wearing tennis shoes, IPods, and halter tops, but I couldn’t see it, and I could not believe it. It was like looking into the soul of the past that shone with the vivacity of the present’s youth and the security of its infallibility.
Panama trotted on stage as if Ecuador had never happened. A small man in black pants and a white, loose fitting shirt with a Fedora style that accompanied a beautiful black woman full of such flowing elegance in her flowered hair and swinging, jade colored bubble that the memorizing reds and whites of her rapidly shrinking and flapping outward dress were not lethal.
The Dominican Republic sauntered on to the stage, both tawny and dressed in simple, light colors. She carried a light pink dress and a white, with red trim top. He had slacks and a short sleeve button up shirt with a hat that put Rick Blaine to shame. They moved like Michael Phelps swims. It was not effortless, but it was as if they were they only ones that were actually doing it, while the rest of the world pattered around in the kiddie pool. They could not do anything without a domination of skill. I am sure that it was not perfect, but my untrained eyes were too dazzled by such pronounced talent, that I could see nothing else.
Finally I saw what could have been the world’s largest butterfly. She had golden gossamer wings, a dark green top, skin that was the thick dark red-brown of exotic wood and a glittery sherbet skirt. Not only did she flap and whirl her wings, stretching them as if to fly and then cocooning herself into a solid wall of diaphanous glimmer, but she moved unearthly so. Her body was uniquely and acutely segmented, each part at once wholly independent of the rest. I say that her gesticulations matched the music only in the beauty of their alien allure.
I could not even hear the crowd shouting “OTRA VEZ!” (another time, encore) at the top of its lungs by the end of the night. I only knew that it was magnificent, and I was there. I was glad it ended so I could know how fantastic it truly was in comparison to the everything else.
