Costa Rican Folklore Dance and Early Childhood Education

Costa Rican Folklore

Folklore and Creative Movement Dance Teacher 

Valeria Chavarria during her formative years.  

As a dance and early childhood educator, the importance of Costa Rican folklore dance as a formative part of the child’s experience is undeniable from both research and field observation perspectives.

From a dance education perspective, for the Costa Rican child in the early years, folklore dance is an important part of an embodied education rendering national and cultural experience since early childhood.

Through the rite of passage of dressing in typical attire, dancing to folklore music, and following traditional choreography, the Costa Rican child steps into the dancing feet of generations of Costa Ricans who danced before . Through the dance experience, Costa Rican children capture their shared historic identity.

From a socio-affective perspective, Costa Rican dance offers a collective and enthusiastic experience through the guttural awakening of musical passion shared in a group dance.

Furthermore, in moments of national unrest, democratic questioning of identity and patriotic crisis, as will exist in contemporary and future history: folklore dance allows a common, peaceful search of this common identity found in the silence of the dancer in the rhythmic nature of collective dance. Costa Rican children that dance together will find further social interactions less challenging and more natural. Costa Rican folklore dance is danced in groups, and usually paired up with a dance partner.

From a developmental experience for preschool children, the complexity of the gross motor experience is extraordinary. The chorographic patterns of folklore dance organise its dancers in geometric patterns such as circles, diagonals and lines.  Dancers will dance side by side and at times will mirror each other. The nature of such movement leads to great challenges to children in the early years that are working on development of laterality, maturity of their vestibular system, and proprioception (Connell and McCarthy, 2014).  Folklore dance choreography through its patterns and movement, provide experiences that allow the brain to explore such challenges through the body.  Through the physical challenges of Costa Rican folklore dance, early years students will explore body and spatial awareness, developing a sense of body subconscious.

Costa Rican Preschool Amazonas Typical Dance.  

Jethro Desanti in his early childhood.  Dancing in pairs.

From a historic perspective, Costa Rican folklore dance reunites national mixed cultural heritage.  Appreciating folklore dance at national patriotic celebrations, the audience will see a variety of female dancers with a variety of colourful dresses with flower and lace depending on the province represented, and gentlemen with hats or countrymen attire for the male dancers.

Folklore Dancer and Dance Teacher Valeria Chavarria

Folklore Dancer and Dance Teacher 

Valeria Chavarria

Male campesino typical dress.
Jethro Desanti Preschool years

Folklore dance is lively and light on the dancer’s feet.  Dancing on a low demi point, on the balls of the feet or flat footed, wearing sandals or leather shoes.  Long necks and strong backs characterize a fluid and soft dance.  The music represents different cultural and historic moments, musical groups from pre-colonial, colonial and mixed-immigrant heritage.    The instruments range from the marimba to the guitar, often accompanied with singing to the folkloric dance (Molina and Palmer, 2011). 

Folklore dance teacher Valeria Chavarria is a young dancer and dance teacher of folklore and creative movement dance for preschool and elementary school children in both public and private schools in Costa Rica.  With eleven years’ experience in folklore dance, she was a great participant for this research study and was generous to lend her time for an interview.  Valeria was a folklore dancer for the troupe Batsú Folkloric Projection.  She represented Costa Rican folklore dance both nationally and internationally.  

Folklore Dancer and Dance Teacher 

Valeria Chavarria and Dancer Dylan Alvarado Fernandez

From her international dance experience, she analyses that contemplating the work of international dance troupes, some countries held their folklore dance to extraordinary high esteem.  She further questioned, “why not us?”

Valeria further explained, “the richness of folklore dance escapes most Costa Ricans, the details of dance style, clothing garments and musical interpretation vary greatly from one province to another.  There is so much to learn still.”

Demonstrating such diverse complexity:

Costa Rican Folklore

Folklore and Creative Movement Dance Teacher 

Valeria Chavarria during her formative years.  

Costa Rican Folklore

Folklore and Creative Movement Dance Teacher 

Valeria Chavarria during her formative years.  

 Costa Rican Folklore

Folklore and Creative Movement Dance Teacher 

Valeria Chavarria during her formative years.

  

 Costa Rican Indigineous Folklore

Folklore and Creative Movement Dance Teacher 

Valeria Chavarria during her formative years

Regarding cultural identity and national pride, she insisted once again, “Why is it that in Costa Rica we are not proud as dancers are in other countries of their folklore?”  Her pedagogical vision is of extending and democratising the dance experience for all students.  Thus, allowing the student to gain further cultural appreciation and hands on learning into their own dance traditions and complex national identity.

Valeria suspects that our identity as a developing nation and former Spanish colony weakens our self-image as a nation as we yearn for the commodities and stability of modern, globalised society.  Perhaps she is right, in our quest to seek to progress and become citizens of the world we may forget to look back and understand our roots and cultural grounding.  

Yet perhaps, as Valeria believes, greater exposure and experience of Costa Rican dance in all its richness and complexity could lead to prouder Costa Ricans.  Costa Ricans with greater sensitivity of the cultural complexity that informs our history and shapes our modernity.  

Rethinking Valeria’s words and appreciating the great pride of the international community for folklore, and of the need for cultural awareness and uniqueness in an increasingly homogeneous international community as nations struggle to conform but at the same time seek nationalism, one wonders indeed: Why not us?  Why not greater folklore dance education in our Costa Rican preschools and schools?  Why not, indeed?

             About Valeria Chavarria

                                                                Folklore Dancer and Dance Teacher 

 During my school years, I was part of a group of typical Costa Rican Folklore called Batsù Folkloric Projection. Over the years I also trained in Ballet, Jazz, Hip Hop, Latin Rhythms and Ballroom.

I have attended several national and international art festivals such as the “Festicers Les Enfants du Monde” in France and the FEA in Costa Rica, also dance competitions, congresses and presentations in various theatres in our country.

My goal is to bring art to as many children and young people as possible, teach them that through music and dance people can acquire discipline and motivation; they can express different feelings and above all, show them that they can, in a physical and mental way, develop many skills. It would be a tool from which they can balance their lives and find a way to cope with difficult situations.

-Valeria 

Alicia Alonso

Alicia Alonso

Prima Ballerina Assoluta Alicia Alonso and founder of the National Ballet of Cuba and the Cuban School of Ballet died on October 17, 2019 at the age of 98. Virtuoso female dancer like no one before her. In an art dominated by the delicate and ethereal woman, she challenged the image of the female gender in classical ballet presenting a strong, athletic, passionate woman with great stage presence. 

Back in her prime, she awakened great admiration from the audiences of the Metropolitan Theatre in New York as few dancers did, and never had a Latina before her, a Cuban.

She could have stayed abroad in New York, in the glory of a dancer with such recognition ... but she decided to return to Cuba.

In a world where women are silent muses and men are the directors, choreographers and absolute leaders Alicia Alonso challenged the classical world again: she became the founder, director, choreographer and teacher of her school and company: The School of Cuban Ballet and the National Ballet of Cuba.

My ballet teacher during my years of study in Mexico, one the company's first-generation soloists and Cuban ballet teacher, Raúl Bustamante, told me that Alicia found her first dancers wherever she found talent regardless of their situation or social status.

She took young men out of the reformatory and told them to use that their energy for good. She was hard on them, demanding unwavering discipline. She helped them find themselves, to become fighters, adult men, dancers.  The Cuban School of Ballet has given the world a spectacular collection of first-class technical and artistic ballet dancers.  In Cuba she challenged machismo and aroused the artistic sensibility of an entire people: the male dancer in Cuba is admired as a national emblem.

Carlos Acosta from the Cuban Ballet Legacy

The scope of The Cuban School of Ballet, the legacy of Alicia Alonso has already become immeasurable. Their male dancers, ballerinas and teachers have sown so many seeds worldwide that the world of dance simply recognizes them and claims them as their own.

All ballet dancers of the world owe part of our artistry to the Great Cuban heritage. Especially in Latin American countries, as in Costa Rica.

I met Alicia Alonso in 1992, I was a very young ballet student. I was impressed to see an elderly adult dancing like her. Her visual disability was significant, she was greatly assisted so as to get her bearings. At that time in the nineties there was no talk of physical disabilities openly, especially in the dance world.  Also the stereotype was that elderly adults were considered people who had to retire and rest, age perceived as a disability as well.

In a rehearsal I observed, her daughter Laura Alonso was directing the rehearsal and coaching her. Laura was very hard on her mother during the rehearsal, she scolded her harshly, as she did not scold anyone. I understood then that professional ballet, like life, was hard and challenges of all types including disabilities, age, gender among others could present great obstacles, even for Alicia Alonso.  Dancing for her, as for all dancers, was challenging too.  Yet she danced.  The humanity and vulnerability of Alicia Alonso was what impressed me the most in my youth.

I want to remember her great like that, as an example of a well lived life, of being a dancer, of being a teacher, but above all as great example of being a wonderful, beautiful, strong and vulnerable, human being.

Thank you, Alicia, may you rest in peace.

Homage to Alicia

The Cuban School of Ballet

On the Transformative Process of Becoming a Ballerina

Costa Rican Ballerina, Valeria Arias in our first 

Choreographic and Artistic Collaboration together, 

Teatro de La Danza, War Survivors. Body Motion.

Oftentimes as a dancer teacher I have felt that my students come to dance class seeking a profound transformation to become ballerinas.  The students seek the proverbial transformation from ugly duckling into the dancing swan. The artistic metamorphosis to become the butterfly.  They want to become the dancer.

Yet however this approach to dance training and education is conceptually and philosophically flawed: 

The student dancer does not dance to become a ballerina.

Rather, the student dancer dances to discover 

the Ballerina that she is.

We do not dance to become dancers.

We dance because we are dancers.

Moreover, we do not dance to become beautiful,

we dance because we are beautiful.

We dance as an expression of our unique beauty. 

Dance by imitation is not true art. It is in transformative dance that we find our unique voice and pure aesthetics.  We find our voice.  The becoming of the dancer is through self-discovery, through a raw struggle of the self - of honesty and the persistent refinement of physical movement through the eternal balancing of self-critique and self-acceptance and the unravelling and revealing of the vulnerable soul.

To dance is not a metamorphosis but a revelation, a transformative process to become oneself.  In the grandeur, imperfections and vulnerability of the unique dancer: in the discovery of personal and unrepeatable beauty and the manifestation of art in movement.

Reach: A Pedagogy for Transformative Dance -Dr. Gaynell Sherrod

On The Road to Travel Upon

Researching is not an easy task.  Especially when it is a topic that one becomes truly invested in and excited about.  The idea of not developing the research as well as the topic deserves is a bit overwhelming.  Also, as one begins to read and find an echo in the voice of other academics it is easy to become mute and nervous about one’s own voice.  

Today I had a wonderful experience, we met with Helen Kindred our professor and leader for the third term of the master’s in dance Middlesex University London programme. As often happens in these meetings, we spoke about many details.  From this meeting I walk away knowing that I must read more about research and about methodologies in the inquiry process in general as well.  I know I still have many hours to spend mulling over my research.  

Furthermore, something very significant came up during the class conversation.  Many of us were very nervous and we were hoping to be able to outline, plan, and get our work ready for presentation.  Hoping to organise our writing and our artefact, to develop our work clearly and delimit our pathway.  However, it has been explained to us repeatedly that our supervisors cannot help us do such a thing.  It is impossible to delimit outcomes or map research still in development.  We ignore that which we do not know, and we are not sure whether what we suspect we will find is truly there.

My classmate Agatha asked today if any of us had found that our research has gone a completely different direction from our original research questions.  In my case it has. That which I deemed important is not so much so and the underlying reason and justification for all this hard research work has shifted momentously before my eyes.  My research has taken a new urgency after reviewing all this literature, field research and researching my dance community... I am now ever so convinced of the imperativeness to further develop my inquiry.  However, with this enthusiasm comes great pressure, both academic and emotional, to excel and do justice to such important work in my field and in my community.  However, I cannot jump ahead, and this was made evident today by Helen.  I am undergoing an extraordinary process now in which I am reaching out to my community at large and my dance community specifically has so much to teach me.  There is so much to understand and analyse, if I obsess with where my research should end, I might lose sight of where the research itself is heading.  I will not enjoy this unique moment of working the field if I do not focus on the research as it is happening and developing before me. 

I hope someday to remember this moment of my life with fondness.  This moment is special in that I have had the privilege of learning openly, with time and dedication and humbleness from others.  This moment is one in that I can and must slowly analyse and understand.  When I was younger, my bachelor studies depended a great deal on my organisation and mapping of activities I had to accomplish, exams I had to take, and even books I had to devour. Today in this dance programme research I am embarking upon, there is no such map... no simple activities to follow nor a right or wrong way of doing things.  I have had to learn to work with diligence and to listen with patience. There is no stairway to climb, but rather the success of this project depends on my humility, discipline, and diligent analysis.  This is about listening to my own experiential learning and to give value to the understanding and knowledge of others.  I must also deepen my philosophical grasp and understanding as I envision and others envision our dance community as it grows and extends, from the tiny classroom, to my city, to my province, and to the larger and beautiful country of Costa Rica. 

As I further understand the importance, the influence and the pathway of dance in Costa Rican early childhood education... I first must stop and patiently read the books, have the conversations, and then unwind and work through the different, difficult questions.  I truly do not know how this research will be shaped by the end of the year nor what answers I will find.  However, I will listen, and I will enjoy this beautifully and ironically, complex, delicate and inspiring moment of my academic life.  I cannot help but close these thoughts with a feeling of gratitude and a tiny little bit more clarity.

Costa Rican Ballet Dancers, Teatro de la Danza.
My student ballerinas from our Chroreographic Workshop class
 from Body Motion Dance Studio