Aurora world dance pageant facilities Colorado artists, invitations individuals in

Kebrina Josefina De Jesús encourages the room of dancers to breathe, to inhale deeply, exhale and connect with their our bodies.

“How will you be probably the most genuine, true self in your dance?” she says. It’s not about nailing the fast-moving samba steps she’s requested them to carry out, however about exhibiting up and being current.

“That is past step, contact, step, contact, pirouette, down. That is an expertise.”

Because the dancers settle down on the finish of sophistication, De Jesús asks them to circle up and mirror on the previous hour. Marian Baena, who involves De Jesús’ samba class each Tuesday night time and helps with social media for the artist, goes first.

“I’m grateful to be alive and I can dance,” Baena says. “There are numerous issues happening in life proper now. However simply having this second to bounce, and connect with my physique, connect with my ancestors, connect with you guys. It’s stunning.”

For De Jesús, that is what dance is all about: embodiment, therapeutic and neighborhood. 

A decade of dance flows to a free daylong occasion

That’s within the ethos of the corporate and college she based a few decade in the past, Samba Colorado. These convictions are additionally the driving pressure behind a brand new native dance pageant De Jesús has organized known as Dancetopia, operating 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at The Folks’s Constructing at East Colfax Avenue and Florence Road in Aurora. 

The daylong world dance occasion, that includes a lineup of all Colorado artists, kicks off with a short opening ceremony after which launches into its first workshop, a session for attendees to study stomach dance from the founder and proprietor of Basma Dance & Health in Aurora. Different workshop choices embrace Polynesian dance, West African dance, courtesy of Boulder-based Emblem Ligi, and Afro-Brazilian dance. The lessons culminate in a efficiency by the taking part dance corporations. 

De Jesús says she needed to convey all of those types, these “dances of the diaspora,” into one area to construct stronger neighborhood among the many dance teams, in addition to showcase their artistry to the broader neighborhood. 

​​“We will take a second to understand and see all of those dances … share their abilities and present the neighborhood we are able to all come collectively and don’t have to remain in our consolation zones,” she says. 

Jontae Piper known as Dancetopia an excellent thought.

“And that is rather like Kebrina, trying to convey the dance neighborhood collectively, particularly individuals of coloration and their cultures,” Piper says. “It’s proper on model for her. And I’ve all the time appreciated that she’s very devoted to perpetuating tradition.”

Piper dances with Hālau Kalama in Aurora and the group’s skilled firm, Kalama Polynesian Dance. With a background in musical theater and hip-hop, she fell in love with the Polynesian artwork of dance throughout a 2012 journey to Hawaii. She started taking lessons at Hālau Kalama after returning dwelling to Colorado and says she linked with the motion in methods she hadn’t with different dance types. 

“I believe it offers me a extremely wholesome stability of with the ability to specific grace and energy on the similar time,” she says. “I get to indicate a bit bit extra of a weak aspect, but additionally with the ability to stability that with being robust as a girl, it’s simply very highly effective for me.”

Piper will lead the Polynesian dance workshop throughout Dancetopia, particularly a lesson in Tahitian dance. She understands that studying any type of dance may be intimidating. However she hopes  individuals’s curiosity will drive them to the occasion, partly as a result of she desires Coloradans to see that the state has a strong world dance scene. 

Ninaad Nariani with Mudra Dance Studio in Centennial additionally hopes individuals received’t let nerves maintain them away. She’ll lead a workshop educating the “Mudra-style” on Saturday. Created by Mudra Dance Studio’s founder, it’s based mostly within the story-driven classical Indian dance type of Kathak, infused with different Indian folks and modern dances.

“We’ll all be dancing collectively,” Nariani says, directing her message to the dance-reluctant. “The entire thought is to come back and dance, and even me, as a instructor, I will likely be taking the entire different lessons. So I will likely be there attempting out issues that I’m not used to, and we’re all form of on this [together].”

For Mudra, it made sense to participate in Dancetopia. The group has collaborated with Samba Colorado previously, and the pageant aligns what the dance studio was constructed on, Nariani says. 

“You don’t have to know what they’re saying in songs to get the beat, you don’t must be talking the identical language to have the ability to transfer collectively,” she says. “So when the concept of Dancetopia got here collectively, for all cultures to come back collectively and join on the concept of dance and music, it’s precisely what we’re about.”

For Samba Colorado’s De Jesús, dancing is part of her biology — she describes dancing as each cell in her physique lighting up with each sway of the hip or extension of the arm. She believes dancing is inherent to individuals’s humanity, and he or she created Dancetopia to assist others rediscover that in themselves after they dance to music with others. And like her common samba and African Brazilian dance lessons, these on the pageant may even have a possibility to share the way it feels to strive these completely different types. 

“Everybody can be part of. Everyone seems to be welcome,” she says.

Dancetopia is free to the general public with assist from help of a $3,000 Denver Arts & Venues grant via the company’s EDI Arts and Tradition Fund. 

De Jesús wish to see Dancetopia turn out to be an annual occasion. She additionally hopes it could encourage herself and her fellow artists to maintain the momentum going on the subject of collaboration on this scale.