Salsa as Resistance
What happens when you give children the words to ideas they may already have? What happens when you introduce children to alternative forms of protesting and introduce what social activism is to them? These questions are what my Senior Capstone project aims to answer. My name is Andrea Rivera and the project I dedicated my semester to was researching dance as resistance in different communities across the world, with a focus on Latin American social dancing, and then turning this research into a five week salsa dance workshop created for younger children as an introduction to social activism.
The goal of my project is to give children the language and tools they may need to engage in social activism. We live in an ever evolving world that is filled with injustice. Protesting is a common form to combat injustice and bring about change that people desire to see. But how do you explain this to a seven-year-old? Do they really need to know? Absolutely! In fact, most seven-year-olds know what protesting and injustice are. Kids are very tuned to the world around them as they learn and absorb knowledge. It’s actually observed that children as young as four and five have abstract ideas of what injustice is. The problem is that many kids don’t have the language to put words to these ideas that they already understand. Thus, this project aims to do that. It aims to start the conversation, help empower the younger generation, and get kids moving!
Acknowledgements
Finally, I wanted to give a huge thank you to everyone who helped make this project possible because I could not have possibly done it alone. Firstly, thank you to my classmates and professor who have provided me with the support and feedback to make this happen. Secondly, I’d like to thank Abril Navarro and Travis Grandy for the tech support in navigating WordPress. Lastly, but certainly not least, huge thank you to the team at the YMCA located in South Dallas for taking the time to talk to me about the logistics of this project.
A special thanks to my family for their support and care throughout my research work!
I hope you enjoy my project as much as I enjoyed making it! Here’s a link so that you can poke around.
https://salsaprogram2023.weebly.com/
Thank you!
–Andrea Rivera
Articles
Here’s a list of articles I used to inspire my train of thought and build my lesson plans:
Resources I used to build the project:
The following websites and pdfs helped me find developmentally appropriate ways to define and explain protest and inequality to children.
Protest for Kids
https://kids.kiddle.co/Protest
https://www.popsugar.com/family/how-to-talk-to-kids-about-protests-activism-47526335
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5694f5c6bfe87314267a8a1b/t/5a9fe809e4966b2fb99f7627/1520429067378/Talking+With+Kids+6+and+Under.pdf
Resources used in the lesson plan
“Salsa Shutdown” protest at DownTown Crossing–Boston Globe
This article talks about a Salsa dance protest that happened in a shopping center in Boston, MA. The protest was meant to support undocumented immigrants and acknowledging the economic power they have.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/12/03/salsa-shutdown-protest-downtown-crossing/R8LM7w3qlqRP2Lr8c9qJ2L/story.html
Students organize “salsa shutdown” in support of undocumented students–The Review at the University of Delaware
This article talks about a salsa shutdown that happened at the University of Delaware in 2017 in support of undocumented students on campus.
http://udreview.com/students-organize-salsa-shutdown-in-support-of-undocumented-students/
*Club Crowd Uses Salsa to Slam Archaic Law–The Japan Times
This article is behind a paywall, however there is a free 7 day trial for the subscription. Alternatively, you can get most of the information about the event from what is show. I will also link a forum where internet users discussed the article and the law for more context. This article discusses a salsa protest that took place in 2012 outside of Shibuya Station in Tokyo, Japan in response to a law that was passed in 1948.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2012/12/29/national/club-crowd-uses-salsa-to-slam-archaic-law/
https://www.salsaforums.com/threads/japanese-salsa-protest.20922/
Don’t know how to dance salsa super well? No worries! Here’s a link that leads to playlist for beginners:
Articles that inspired my train of thought:
Aitken, S. 2001. Geographies of young people: the morally contested spaces of identity, New York: Routledge.
Concepción, Alma and Halbert Barton. 2003. Embodied Meanings: Dance in Puerto Rico. Caribbean Dance: From Abakuá to Zouk: How Movement Shapes Identity, ed. Susanna Sloat, 165–75. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.
Costantino, Roselyn and Taylor, Diana. 2000. Holy Terrors: Latin American Women Perform. Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory Issue 22, 11(2): 7–24.
Delgado, Celeste Fraser and José Esteban Muñoz, eds. 1997. Everynight Life: Culture and Dance in Latin/o America. Durham: Duke University Press.
E. Kay M. Tisdall & P. Cuevas-Parra (2022) Beyond the familiar challenges for children and young people’s participation rights: the potential of activism, The International Journal of Human Rights, 26:5, 792-810, DOI: 10.1080/13642987.2021.1968377
Fernando J. Bosco (2010) Play, work or activism? Broadening the connections between political and children’s geographies, Children’s Geographies, 8:4, 381-390, DOI: 10.1080/14733285.2010.511003
Flores, Juan. 2000. The Latino Imaginary. In From Bomba to Hip-Hop: Puerto Rican Culture and Latino Identity, 191–203. New York: Columbia University Press.
Gamson, W. 1975. The strategy of social protest, Homewood, IL: Dorsey Press.
RentaPriscilla, y “Salsa Dance: Latino/ a History in Motion.” Centro Journal, vol. XVI, no. 2, 2004, pp.138-157. Redalyc, https://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=37716210
Technofuturos: Critical Interventions in Latina/o Studiesedited by Nancy Raquel Mirabal, Agustin Laó-Montes (pgs 271-290)