Following an evening of classes in Afro-Caribbean dance forms, I find myself increasingly intrigued by the forms of movement that emerge from combining the earthly, undulating, percussive nature of African dance with Caribbean joyfulness and pelvis-centric sensuality. The inherent joyfulness of rumba is weighted with sadness because more emphatically than any other dance I have experienced, this one is used as a means of forgetting. On the other hand, its music contains age-old stories, so the dance that expresses it is also a means of remembering. It is a dance that liberates the body in its entirety and puts the mind in a happy trance. The steps are weighted but not harsh or aggressive; rather the foot plays with the ground, massaging it and making it pliable, the rigid earth. The earth receives and sends back this plied energy which ripples through the torso and out the arms- suave, always suave.
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