PUBLIC EVENTS
BOMBA!
Dance Workshop with Melinda Gonzalez and
Jose Ortiz of Los Bomberos de Brooklyn
Thursday, June 17, 7-9PM
$10 general admission/ $5 students/low-income
Brooklyn-born and Williamsburg-bred dancer Melinda Gonzalez and barril drummer Jose Ortiz teach the fundamentals of bomba, including the cultural context and basic movement and rhythms of this Afro-Puerto Rican cultural expression.
MELINDA GONZALEZ AND JOSE "DR. DRUM" ORTIZ
Melinda Gonzalez and Jose "Dr. Drum" Ortiz dance, teach, play and perform bomba, Puerto Rico's oldest native art form. An Afro-Puerto Rican art form, bomba involves basic (paseo) and improvised steps (piquete), and live drumming on large barril drums. It is the dancer who determines the drummer's rhythm with her steps, shoulder shrugs, flourishes of her skirt and other movements.
Melinda was born and raised in Brooklyn and has studied with master bomberos in New York and Puerto Rico. She regularly travels to Puerto Rico to further her studies of the regional styles and rhythms. Percussionist Jose, is a master of the barril drum and a seasoned teacher and musician who can be found playing in his native borough, The Bronx and his adopted home of Williamsburg. Melinda and Jose are working to reinvigorate Puerto Rican traditions across generations, in Brooklyn and throughout the boroughs. They recently founded a youth group ensemble, BombaYo, and direct the group Los Bomberos de Brooklyn.
ABOUT DANCE IN THE HOOD: WILLIAMSBURG TRADITIONS
Presented as part of CPR's series, New Voices in Live Performance, and curated by Nicole Macotsis, Dance in the Hood: Williamsburg Traditions is a week of workshops, performances and discussions recognizing neighborhood dance traditions and expert local artists - from the late '60 to today.
For many New Yorkers, North Brooklyn's Williamsburg embodies the waves of gentrification that have transformed parts of the city in the last decade. As its neighbors, geography and prices changed, the area began to be represented by media and developers as trendy, hip and creative.
But despite its recent recognition as an "artistic center", the creation of art, and especially dance, in Williamsburg isn't new: hipsters in the hood were dancing long before it was safe to ride the L train. From Los Sures to the North Side, generations have made a tradition of innovating dance genres, such as Brooklyn rock dance, reviving older ones, such as bomba, and mixing culturally specific dances and neighborhood narratives into contemporary forms, as does CARAS El Puente Dance Ensemble'.
Dance in the Hood: Williamsburg Traditions week-long program is only able to highlight a few dances, but many others not included, such as Dominican, Polish, and Italian social dances, have a long history in the neighborhood and are still performed today.
The purpose of Dance in the Hood: Williamsburg Traditions is three-fold: to draw attention to the legacy of dance artistry in the neighborhood; to get neighbors talking about changes in cultural expressions due to social and economic changes; and finally, to stimulate collaborations between CPR's modern dance regulars and other neighborhood dancers who have been performing and perpetuating vernacular and formal forms for generations - each with their own story to tell from the hood.
The New Voices in Live Performance Series is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council; The Mertz Gilmore Foundation; and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.
