Not All Puerto Ricans Dance
Sept 6, 2020 9:36:05 GMT -5
Post by Radrook Admin on Sept 6, 2020 9:36:05 GMT -5
Not All Puerto Ricans Dance
There is this popular misconception that all Puerto Ricans know how to dance. Well, like all stereotypes, which attempt to lump everyone under a certain category, this one is also not true. For example, I am Puerto Rican and I can't dance and never have been interested in dancing. I truly wish that I were since it looks like a lot of fun. But it never appealed to me due to my shyness and because responding to music with body movement seems ridiculous to me. I mean, why should a human body be making all those contortions just because a sound is happening?
However, it was not an aversion to music itself. I did sing accapela on street corners and played rhythm guitar in a rock band back in the 1960's However, when invited to dance, I had to pass and put up with the looks of astonishment on the face of the girl, ny new girlfriend, who had invited me.
Neither are all Puerto Ricans who dance good dancers. For example, my father, who was an island-raised Puerto Rican, was as clumsy as hell when he tried. In fact, he resembled un caballo desbocau, a horse running out of control, when he repeatedly and stubbornly attempted to execute the required motions of the popular dance called La Pachanga.
His clumsiness was very obvious. He was always on the verge of toppling over and hitting the floor face-first while keeping both his arms stiffly extended in what resembled a doubled-Hitler Nazi salute, torso almost parallel to the ground, legs shuffling like some frenetic rooster scratching the ground for seeds, and his pale pug-nosed face contorted into a grimace of fierce determination.
In stark contrast, my mother was fanatically addicted to dancing, and was fairly good at it. But apart from her, nobody else in my extended Puerto Rican family ever manifested any interest in dancing at all.