The Spiritual Edge: Afro-Cuban movement with meaning

Some people who take dance classes regularly have a saying: “Dance is my church.”

Dancer Stella Adelman says just that about going to Afro-Cuban folkloric dance class. “There’s a release to it,” she says. To her, it’s a place where she can reflect and find some clarity through movement. To some practitioners this clarity comes from being active and getting exercise, for others, it’s literally a spiritual practice.

The Bay Area is home to many instructors of Afro-Cuban rhythms. Music and dance lovers come from all over the world to participate in workshops taught by some of the most loved teachers and dancers from the Cuban Diaspora. Many of them have found home here.

Inside the dance studio at Dance Mission Theater three drummers sit next to one another in an echoing dance classroom. Each has a drum shaped like a giant hourglass laying across their lap sideways. With each smack of their hand it looks like they are scooping air into the drum’s leather head.

Susana Arenas Pedroso is the instructor of the class. She’s standing in front of a group of about 10 dancers while explaining the roots of the Cuban Orisha, or God Ellegua. Pedroso was born and raised in Havana, Cuba.

“Orisha is the way we walk, eat, the way we express,” Pedroso says.

A Connection to Home

Pedroso is a well known teacher in the Bay Area, a place that has built a reputation for having world class Afro-Cuban folklore instructors. Like many teachers here, Pedroso is a former dancer from a Cuban dance company that went on tour in the US. She decided to stay. Pedroso explains to the class today that Afro-Cuban rhythms are rooted in Africa, from the Yoruba people.

In the very Catholic colonized Cuba, African slaves were forbidden to practice their Yoruba religion. The Spaniards forced them to adopt Catholicism, but many slaves silently refused and came up with an alternative.

“When I went to the church of Virgin of Regla,” says Pedroso, “you feel good. You bring flowers and it’s part of life, part of Cuban culture.”

Some people who take dance classes regularly have a saying: “Dance is my church.”

Dancer Stella Adelman says just that about going to Afro-Cuban folkloric dance class. “There’s a release to it,” she says. To her, it’s a place where she can reflect and find some clarity through movement. To some practitioners this clarity comes from being active and getting exercise, for others, it’s literally a spiritual practice.

The Bay Area is home to many instructors of Afro-Cuban rhythms. Music and dance lovers come from all over the world to participate in workshops taught by some of the most loved teachers and dancers from the Cuban Diaspora. Many of them have found home here.

Inside the dance studio at Dance Mission Theater three drummers sit next to one another in an echoing dance classroom. Each has a drum shaped like a giant hourglass laying across their lap sideways. With each smack of their hand it looks like they are scooping air into the drum’s leather head.

Susana Arenas Pedroso is the instructor of the class. She’s standing in front of a group of about 10 dancers while explaining the roots of the Cuban Orisha, or God Ellegua. Pedroso was born and raised in Havana, Cuba.

“Orisha is the way we walk, eat, the way we express,” Pedroso says.

A Connection to Home

Pedroso is a well known teacher in the Bay Area, a place that has built a reputation for having world class Afro-Cuban folklore instructors. Like many teachers here, Pedroso is a former dancer from a Cuban dance company that went on tour in the US. She decided to stay. Pedroso explains to the class today that Afro-Cuban rhythms are rooted in Africa, from the Yoruba people.

In the very Catholic colonized Cuba, African slaves were forbidden to practice their Yoruba religion. The Spaniards forced them to adopt Catholicism, but many slaves silently refused and came up with an alternative.

“When I went to the church of Virgin of Regla,” says Pedroso, “you feel good. You bring flowers and it’s part of life, part of Cuban culture.”

Not many dancers in the class realize that Brandy is a priest, to many she’s just the drummer that seems to play all of the rhythms with ease. Brandy says these sessions are part of her Santería practice.

“I have Native American blood and I’ve always believed the powers of the earth are sacred … [This religion is] very firmly rooted in music. I like that it’s beautiful. You don’t have to be Cuban or African. It’s something that touches the human being-ness,” Brandy says.

I tell Brandy about my experience living in Cuba. A place that I know well; I spent years studying there, and it’s where I went to my first Santería ceremony. Neighbors and friends crowded in a small living room. Men wearing white played Batá drums. A woman began to dance-- slow intricate moves that turned into convulsive like movements, shaking and screaming. Eyes wide. I was told she’d been taken by the spirit.

Carolyn Brandy tells me this wouldn’t likely happen at the dance class, but she says there are places that you can experience this deeper side of Santería in the Bay Area. Like at her home. I visit Brandy in San Leandro, and she invites me into her living room.

It’s like walking into a shrine. Altars to gods line the walls.

“Obatalla’s animal is a lot of shells, here’s a tortoise shell.”

She points at an altar: “Lots of flowers, tons of flowers,.”

Brandy recently had a religious ceremony at her home. She moved out the tables and chairs, set up drums and people dancing were overcome by Orisha’s in the middle of her living room.

“The goal is to have someone go in a trance- when Orisha comes down through people they do amazing things, healing people.”

“Healing.” That’s the same word some of the dancers at Dance Mission Theater use to describe the experience of their Afro-Cuban Folkloric classes.

As the women drummers begin to play, and the dancers follow teacher Susana Pedroso across the floor. Some of their faces begin to twist and change, some of their eyes widen and the drums respond with more force. People begin to sing the call and response of the Orisha’s.

Some people know the words to the Orisha songs and others just improvise, moved by the need to let something out, no matter if it’s a part of their religious practice or not.