Musicians Mateo Cano and Maria Puentes Flores are founders of the musical ensemble, Pulso de Barro, or "pulse of the clay," that performs the Son Jarocho music from the Mexican state of Veracruz. Son Jarocho is a highly rhythmic musical style that came about through...
Lalita Ramnauth was born and raised in Guyana where, at a young age, she and her family discovered her natural talent for singing. Having moved to the United States from Guyana in 1992, she eventually relocated to Schenectady.  Lalita possesses a large repertoire of...
FELIX NELSON was born in 1988 and grew up in the Jamestown area of Accra. He followed in the footsteps of his talented parents to become a highly skilled musician, singer, dancer and dance educator. Felix came to the US in 2006 to join his father Zorkie in upstate NY...
For almost four decades, b-boying,
otherwise known as breaking or
break dancing, has been a staple of New
York City street life. B-boying is an artistic
and improvisational mode of non-verbal
communication and competition between
individuals and groups, usually in relationship
to music. It arose out of the streets of
the South Bronx in the early 1970s and, at
times, became an alternative to gang fighting:
that is, a non-violent resolution to the
problems of the street through the creative
use of the body, mind, and space without
weapons.
Brooklyn Contra is the latest addition
to a contra dance subculture that for over
half a century has been hidden in plain
sight among the glittering distractions of
New York City. The latest contra dance
growth spurt started some 15 years ago at
the Manhattan contra dance series, when
an influx of younger dancers arrived on
the scene and kept coming back every week
for more.
This article discusses, from the perspective of transnational cultural studies of performance-based symbolism, the practice of New York-based dancers, who learned the tradition in urban migrantcommunities in Lima and have practiced the dance there, as well as in the rural settings of their origin and now abroad in the US.
North African dancer and teaching artist, Esraa Warda, reports on her fieldwork in Algerian communities in Brooklyn, New York.
Dance historian and ethnomusicologist, James Kimball, examines the term, “Hog Rassle,” as it refers to an unruly and energetic square dance.