I have studied dancing in cultures around the world for decades. Academically this endeavor finally led to the writing and publication of Dancing Culture Religion (2012). What most do not know is that for many years in the late ’90s and early 2000s I ran a dance and music studio Bantaba World Dance & Music with my daughter Jenny. When I began studying dancing I never thought about doing anything more than teaching about other people’s dances, yet my love for dancing and my devotion to its teaching led me, perhaps unsurprisingly, to teaching dancing as well as performing. My granddaughter, Fatu, danced on youth companies for a dozen years and she is now pursuing a career as a professional commercial dancer. Seeing her accomplishments is a constant wonder to me . I regret not learning both music and dancing from an early age. Yet, we do what we do and I am grateful that even late in life I discovered a passion that changed my lives.
While I have no claim to accomplishment, I offer several videos that somehow endured. Two of them show me performing at the YWCA annual fundraising event “Dancing with the Boulder Stars.” It pairs non-dancer members of the community with dancers for performances aimed at raising charity money. I was pleased to be involved with this for a number of years and these two videos survive.
2010 Salsa Performances
For over ten years we at Bantaba World Dance and Music performed annually at the local summer festivals in Boulder. In the early years we had representations of dances from many forms. By the later years our dancing had come to be largely focused on partner salsa and rueda de casino. Some videos from Boulder Creek Festival (always on Memorial Day weekend) and the International Festival (in June) survived for the years 2011 and 2012. They offer a glimpse into our dancing at that time.
2011 Salsa Performances
2012 Salsa Performances
Other Performance and Rehearsal Vids
For several years I was asked to be a “professional” dancer in the Boulder YWCA’s annual fundraiser Dancing with the Boulder Stars. My job was to teach a dance to a local non-dancer and perform it on stage at the annual show with votes for all the competing couples being made as amounts of cash. I have a couple videos from these events. I also present a couple other videos. One is simply me dancing with Elise Butler Silva in our north Boulder studio. Following those is a performance of rueda de casino that we performed for a local Brazilian show.
