Bronx Dancer Milteri Tucker has brought a fusion of the traditional Puerto Rican dance Bomba with a modern twist back to the borough she calls home.
Tucker is currently teaching a Bomba workshop at the BAAD Theater in the Bronx where she says the goal of her six-week class is to do more than teach the moves of the dance. She wants the students to learn the culture and history of the people through dance in its purest form of folkloric dance.
“Dance is power. It is the canvas and we are the paint so we have to embody the form in order to take someone to another world for the duration of a performance,” she said.
The workshop began just months following her sold out performance at the Pregones Theater this past summer at the request of many women in the community.
The Bomba Bombazo Fall Workshop starts by teaching the three elements of the Afro- Puerto-Rican folkloric art form: song, rhythms and dance. Bomba is characterized by the communication between dancer and drummer. The dancer makes a series of movements that the drummer responds to with a synchronized beat. It is the drummer that tries to follow the movement of the dancer, not the other way around.
The workshop will conclude with a performance by the students of the workshop for the community at the end of October.
