I learned to dance salsa and merengue in my grandmother’s house in the Canal Zone town of Pedro Miguel, Panama. My cousin Marlene taught me when I was about nine or ten, to music gently escaping a small radio. I hold tightly to the lovely thoughts of Marlene, Lorraine, and I, spinning each other around the tiled floor. Marlene showed us the basics, and we would practice there with each other. We knew all the songs, especially those by Juan Luis Guerra and 440. We sung words we didn’t understand about love, and making love, and being in love, while the cool breeze came in off the lake and blew through the slanted glass window panes.
My next informal salsa training was years later, during graduate school in Charlottesville, VA, of all places. I would go to Salsa Sundays almost every week. There were people from all over Latin America and the Caribbean. Each dance partner had his own style and rhythm. There was one guy in particular who would argue with me: “I’m the man! I lead!” he would thunder into my ear when I failed to spin the way he wanted.
A feminist down to my dancing toes, I struggled to stop resisting, until I learned to trust the process. I discovered that there was power in flowing, lifting my feet without needing to know where they would land. Gradually, dancing became a safe space where I felt empowered. I learned to discern between dance partners who were interested in dominating, and those who strived to work with me.
With dance partners who are respectful of my space, and careful to non-verbally communicate their intentions, I am able to reach a place of confident and enjoyable acceptance that everything is out of my control.
After ten years of living in the States, I returned home to Panama, and dancing remained an essential part of my self-care routine. It was on a trip to the Colon Province of Portobelo, located just under two hours from Panama City, when I discovered watching dance could be empowering and healing too. It was there that I witnessed the enchanting Congo dance for the first time.
During the dance a group of women sing while a group of men play the drums. Their enchanting call and response songs set the tone in the dancing circle. At any point there is only one couple in the center. This is a circle for one man and one woman, and as a new woman (or girl) or man (or boy) steps in the other steps out.
In the center, the women and girls twirl and rock around. The men tend to dance back and forth. It is a “game” in which the women protect their space with elbows and arms, and the men try to push past their boundaries with lunges and kisses. While the men weave and maneuver, the women block, dodge and push them away. Strikingly, as they dance, the girls and women keep one foot on the ground at all times.
