Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: The Columbia Festival concluded on Friday at the Pakistan National Council of the Arts (PNCA) with a salsa dance workshop and the screening of a film from 2015, ‘Embrace of the Serpent’.

The salsa dance workshop was conducted by Daniela Bohorquez, the cultural attaché at the Columbia Embassy in Ankara and a dance teacher. The two-day dance workshop attracted several young people from the twin cities and the members of the National Performing Arts Group (NPAG). Daniela Bohorquez taught the dance workshop participants several basic and advance and practised with them.

Salsa is a popular form of social dance that originated in the Caribbean. The movements of salsa have origins in Cuban Son, cha-cha-cha, mambo and Puerto Rican bomba and plena and other dance forms. The salsa dance and music originated in the mid1970s in New York.

The name salsa (sauce) has been described as a dance since the mid-1800s. It evolved from earlier Cuban dance forms which were popular in the Caribbean, Latin America and the Latino communities in New York since the 1940s. Salsa, like most music genres, has gone through a lot of variation through the years and incorporated elements of Afro-Cuban and Afro-Caribbean dances such as Guaguancó and Pachanga. Different countries of the Caribbean and Latin America have distinct salsa styles of their own, such as Cuban, Cali Colombia, Puerto Rican, LA and New York styles.

The film, ‘Embrace of the Serpent’, covers two periods: 1909 and 1940 with adventures in Amazon tributary. Two scientific expeditions were conducted decades apart. The film carries rich visuals, exploring man, nature, and wilderness and then comes the destructive power. The film is poetic in looks but a harsh comment on the lost culture by invaders.

Ambassador Juan Alfredo Pinto Saavedra while speaking on the occasion of the salsa workshop said a great interest has been observed from the youth to learn salsa that eventually highlights the need of a salsa academy in Islamabad. He said for bilateral cultural exchanges we need to have reciprocal diplomatic relations and trade ties. The people to people contact would enhance the social and cultural understanding for mutual socio economic benefits.

Published in Daily Times, October 28^th 2017.