Moving to Boulder: Early Reflections & Observations

I recently completed three major life events in the span of three weeks:  leaving my job, getting married, and moving.  I managed the stress with CrossFit, massage, and yoga, and not only kept my sanity, but also enjoyed this rare stage.  It was full of change, and change for good, but not without sacrifice. I was careful to allow the variety of emotions these events brought…to process the loss of leaving my friends and life in Greenville, as well as to celebrate the joy of beginning a new chapter with the love of my life in Boulder.

The months leading up to our wedding were also full of change. I completed Catechism classes, confessed all the sins of my life thus far, and converted to Catholicism.  I studied Spanish with a wonderful Chilean instructor to brush up my conversation skills before meeting my fiancé’s family for the first time the week before our wedding. I left my dance team. I stopped volunteering to focus on wedding planning. I began my job search in Boulder, without much luck – only a couple of awkward video interviews. I moved most of my belongings to our new home in Boulder and moved in with my parents temporarily.

I appreciate routine, so the first few weeks in Boulder were somewhat challenging.  With so much unpacking, organizing, and housekeeping to do, I spent too much time home-bound and missed socializing, sunlight, and exercise. I’m goal-oriented, so I’m learning to both structure my days and to occasionally relax.

Now, we are training for a 5K, running two or three times per week, and hiking most weekends. I’m still job-hunting, starting to network, and looking forward to finding the right fit in time. The house is almost in order – we’ve finished the major furniture purchases and decorated the main living spaces, with just the basement rooms left to organize.

Which means – deep breath – I have a little time to sit down and reflect on my new hometown.

Let me start with rabbits. They are everywhere – scurrying around the trail next to the soccer fields, hiding behind my car in the shopping center parking lot, watching us pull into the garage from our front lawn. Deer are pretty common, too. We’ve seen them on our runs, in our front yard, and of course a herd of them trying to cross four lanes of traffic in the center of town, Estes Park. We were once descending from a park in the mountains outside of Denver, when an elk pranced in front of the Mercedes. Pablo slowed to a stop in time for us to be surrounded by a family of elk speedily making their way down the mountainside. While we’ve heard news of bear sightings, thankfully, we have not, yet, had that experience.  Although I did notice a temporary tent sign along our running trail that said, “Mountain lion active in this area.”

Summers in Boulder are absolutely beautiful. The weather is warm, dry, and sunny with a cool breeze at night. There’s an abundance of outdoor activities – free concerts downtown, Friday night partner dancing outside the landmark tea house, and more breweries than you can count. Pearl Street Mall, Boulder’s pedestrian-friendly main street, rivals Greenville’s downtown with its restaurants, art galleries, shops, entertaining buskers, and mountain views.

I’ve only started to get my feet wet in the community – Pablo and I took a West Coast Swing class and danced at the tea house, the Avalon, and a spirited Cuban dance party. I took a Samba dance course from a talented and passionate instructor who’s part of Samba Colorado. I attended an info session at Intercambio, a non-profit organization improving immigrants’ lives through English classes, citizenship classes, and intercultural events. We attended a Davidson Alumni event in Denver, where I reconnected with an old theatre friend. I met up with a grad school friend and auditioned as a singer for her band. I met a non-profit contact through Pablo’s colleague who introduced me to a local Director of Development, and both made recommendations for organizations, events, or people to possibly reach out to.

My days are usually very domestic. I’m either cooking and cleaning, or decorating the house. Podcasts are my companion in this domestic life – currently on tap:  TED Talks en español, writers on writing, and passive real estate investing. We eat at home 90% of the time, so my Pinterest recipe board is filling up with our favorites, from healthier options like honey-glazed salmon to game-day fun like French onion beef sliders. Our Bellini Kitchen Master, a wedding gift from Pablo’s aunt, also deserves a shout-out here. Pablo calls it the “kitchen robot” as cooking with it is 95% hands off.

I love living close to downtown. It seems that everywhere in Boulder is trail accessible. We’ve discovered the perfect 3.5 mile loop from our home and often leave in time to watch the sunset over the mountains along the trail. The trail passes a large cemetery with wild flowers growing in the ditch, soccer fields where children are training to compete, a bright yellow house on the corner we call “la casa amarilla,” and a small public park with a winding narrow trail. We are walking distance from an old lodge that was popular in the 70’s, with a pool, and from public tennis courts.

We are renting for now. The cost of housing in Boulder has skyrocketed in the past eight years. The median home price in Boulder has risen from $550,000 in 2011 to around $850,000 in 2017. (Median home value in Greenville is around $178,000.) Compared with national averages, Boulder County’s growth rate is relatively speedy. Due to a highly-educated workforce and strong entrepreneurism, the Boulder area has one of the nation’s largest concentrations of IT employment – 4.5 times the U.S. average. Other industries driving the economy are aerospace, bioscience, cleantech, natural products, and outdoor recreation. While the cost of living here is higher than in Greenville, we are nowhere near the cost of living in Sunnyvale, CA, where Pablo’s team’s home office is located. The median home price in Sunnyvale is $1,945,500.

Philanthropy here is different, too. While affluence is pervasive, generosity with cash contributions is not necessarily. The secular culture, high turnover rate amongst residents, and small local fundraising infrastructure are contributing factors. Those who do give generously tend to feel called by a sense of social justice or a spiritual motivation. Many were raised by parents who taught them to give back. The United Way plays a less significant role than in Greenville and church giving plays a much less significant role than in the Bible Belt.

Boulder may at first seem like a community of rich, white hippies.  Let’s look at some stats:  Boulder County is becoming a bit more diverse, from 90% Anglo in 1990 to 78% Anglo in 2015, with increases in Latino (14%) and Asian populations (5%). People of African descent make up only 0.6% of the population, compared to 18.1% in Greenville County. Boulder is a highly educated community. In the City of Boulder, there are more people with master’s degrees or higher than there are people with Bachelor’s degrees or lower. While the median family income in Boulder County is 50% higher than the national average, Anglo families are faring much better than Latino families in regards to income.

While Boulder is technically a smaller county than Greenville, its proximity to Denver (29.3 miles) lends a metropolitan feel. Pablo and I have plans to attend a Rockies baseball game there soon, and we have tickets to see Deshaun Watson and the Texans play vs. the Broncos. We plan to see Beck play at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre, acclaimed for its impeccable acoustics and stunning natural landscape. I’ve heard that Denver also has a world-class symphony orchestra, Broadway shows, and beautiful botanical gardens, so there’s lots left to explore.

Our new neighbors have welcomed us. In the summer, they often throw neighborhood potluck parties in our cul-de-sac. Next door is one of the founders of Boulder Beer, the first craft brewery in Boulder. He’s also a serious cycler. Across the cul-de-sac is a dentist. Next to him lives a friendly German lady and her husband. Caddy cornered, we have a tennis-playing widow and resident New Yorker living next to her daughter and son in-law, avid skiers.

I’m eight weeks into my new life in Boulder – so far so good! The beauty of the natural surroundings and proximity to outdoor recreation is remarkable. I look forward to learning more about the community here and my place in it.

The Agent Orange Room

My uncle told me this Christmas that he suspects one of the causes of his Parkinson’s Disease is his exposure to Agent Orange during his service in Vietnam.  He told me this as his shaking hands turned the pages of a small photo book that my friend Sam made from our recent two-week vacation to Vietnam, our bright faces gazing happily from over a pot of phở, with glasses of wine from the deck of a cruise ship, and over buckets of live seafood while pointing to our next meal.  Ha Long Bay was so beautiful, I told my uncle, and he said, but what about Cam Ranh Bay?  He spelled it out for me.  He wanted to see pictures of this former United States military base where he had spent days working on planes during the roughly 20 year-long Vietnam War.

When Sam suggested that we visit Vietnam a few months ago, I thought, great.  I had a friend who had taught English in Saigon and loved it, and I knew that the Vietnamese salsa community was growing.  It would be my first return to Asia since studying comparative religion and culture in Taiwan, India, and Turkey in college, and our friend Drew had already been and was eager to show us the ropes.  Jay was along for the ride, so we were sure to have a fabulous time while being documented by our personal photographer and Instagram enthusiast. 

And of course, there was the curiosity of this country that had victoriously withstood one of the longest and most controversial wars in U.S. history.

When our guide told us that our next stop on the city tour was the War Remnants Museum, we were all eager to absorb some history.  Our guide warned us, this museum used to be called the Museum of U.S. Evils (Wikipedia translates this to the Exhibition House for U.S. and Puppet Crimes, and both names are accurate.)  Our guide warned us, there’s a book at the end of the museum for people to write down their emotions after experiencing the museum.  You shouldn’t look at that book because it will upset you as Americans. 

The first room began on the third floor with massacres of women and children, photos blown up and on display of people who were killed or who were about to be killed.  Each room of the museum brought new horrors of war, and sorrow weighed visibly on the bodies of museum visitors.  The room that cut most deeply into my spirit was titled, “Agent Orange Aftermath in the U.S. Aggressive War in Vietnam.” Seeing the faces of innocent men, women, and children who were disfigured and disabled as a result of the U.S. spraying this herbicide over Vietnamese agricultural land was heart-wrenching.  Compelled to share, I returned to the room a second time to take photos.

The museum ended on the ground floor with an exhibition of peace and anti-war propaganda from around the world.  In the corner next to the exit was a little shop of souvenirs hand-crafted and sold by people who are disfigured as a result of Agent Orange.  I spent a dollar on a little Vietnamese girl key chain, who now hangs on the Christmas tree.

After the museum, we returned to our vacation—exploring beautiful nature and ancient temples, eating delicious and exotic meals, and enjoying the friendly and welcoming people. 

Times have really changed, my uncle commented after I showed him the little Vietnamese girl handicraft on the Christmas tree and told him how much we enjoyed traveling in Vietnam.  Until that moment, I didn’t realize that Agent Orange could be what stole my uncle’s health and mobility.  Here are some others who were affected:

Dance Community and Cultural Identity

Introduction

            Dance and music often play a role in creating community and affirming identity.  Recent research on dance communities explores the ways in which dance provides not only a space for cultural expression, but also a space for negotiating and transforming identity.  This paper reviews recent literature on dance communities, drawing special attention to four themes:  embodied social identity, cultural consciousness, performing sexuality, and global discourse.  These four themes give insight into the link between cultural identity and dance communities in the world today.  

Dance Community and Cultural Identity

Embodied Social Identity

            In the article “Ethnicity, identity, and music,” ethnomusicologist Martin Stokes (1994) follows writers such as Bourdieu (1977) and De Certeau (1984) to argue that music and dance do not simply reflect culture.  Rather, music and dance are social performance in which meanings are generated.  They provide the means by which the hierarchies of place are negotiated and transformed.  For example, a rural migrant to the city may begin to identify with urban music genres, thereby facilitating a transformation from proletarian to urbanite.

            Stokes (1994) describes how the places constructed through music involve notions of difference and social boundary, which helps to organize hierarchies of a moral and political order.   He examines the ways in which different social identities might be negotiated though music.  Questions around ethnicity often involve discussions regarding authenticity, or the “authentic” traces of identity “in” music.  Music is used by social actors in specific local situations to maintain distinctions between us and them, and terms such as authenticity are often used to justify these boundaries. 

            Music might also be used to propagate a national identity through state control or influence over universities, conservatories, and archives.  For example, during the national reforms in Turkey in 1935, village radio sets played educational programs disseminating “new” Turkish language, history, and folklore, as well as musical genres representing Turkey’s new “European” identity.  Just as musical performance enacts dominant communal values, it can also enact rival principles of social organization (Stokes, 1994).

            In sum, music and dance are invariably communal activities that bring people together in specific alignments.  The way in which people interact through music and dance with these social alignments can provide a powerful affective experience in which social identity is literally “embodied” (Stokes, 1994).                

            In the article “Moving identity: dance in the negotiation of sexuality and ethnicity in Cyprus,” Stavros Stavrou Karayanni (2006) uses Cyprus as a case study for a crossroad where ethnic, sexual, gender, and race politics are complex, interwoven, and endlessly negotiated.  The history of colonization in Cyprus not only scripts national manhood, but also exercises control over every individual’s body.  Karayanni (2006) eloquently describes the embodied nature of identity, especially as it relates to national history:

If our bodies are organic vessels that carry our personal history, our idiosyncrasies, our emotions and frustrations, signs that mark our national, gender and class identity, then when we set that body in motion the entire microcosm of the individual is on display; a microcosm replete with contradictions such as control and resistance, compliance and oppression.  In other words, in dance, the body resonates with its history, thus becoming a site where various meanings manifest themselves and cross paths with each other.  (p. 252)

Thus movement becomes a medium to process body memory, as well as to construct and mobilize social identity.

Cultural Consciousness

            In the article “Dance as a means of cultural identity: A case of the Bukusu Kamabeka dance,” Mellitus Nyongesa Wanyama (2011) addresses the role that music education must play in order to preserve traditional Kenyan music and dance as valuable cultural identity treasures.  The Bukusu Kamabeka dance has a peculiar style that distinguishes it from similar shoulder dances by the Luo, Kamba, Gusii, Kuria, Giriama, and others.  This particular style of dance is therefore part of the cultural identity of the Bukusu people.  Wanyama (2011) explores the unique Bukusu cultural identities associated with the performance of Litunga music and the Kamabeka dance, including instruments, informal music education, communal rituals, timbre of voices, rhythm variations, idiosyncratic dance flares, and folk songs.

            Some of the songs in litunga music tell the story of the mythical-genealogical foundations of the Bukusu community.  Others allude to the historical continuum of events that the community has undergone.  Dancers, or as Wanyama calls them “culture owners,” dance their experiences, struggles, and aspirations.  In doing so, they not only mobilize their cultural identity, but also reshape their philosophy of life and hope as they dance the kamabeka (Wanyama, 2011).

            In the article “Identity Discourses on the Dancefloor,” Bryan Rill (2010) examines the Electronic Dance Music Culture (EDMC) as one of the largest subculture musical movements in history.   The article takes a psychological approach to the trance consciousness that occurs on the dance floor and argues that dancing re-constitutes the bodily self an as interaction rather than a corporeal body. 

            People who participate in raves describe it as a somatic experience, one that silences the inner language of our waking consciousness and moves the dancer into the present moment.  The egocentric “I” is superseded by “We” and thinking is second to feeling.  Rill (2010) uses scientific theories of human consciousness to articulate the phenomenological experience of musical trancing.  Using a radical departure from traditional cognitive theory, in which the world is objectively “out there” and people are a singular, bounded unitary consciousness, Rill (2010) points to neuroscientists who theorize an embodied context of the lived experience (Merleau-Ponty, 1968; Varela and Rosch, 1991; Maturana and Varela, 1987; Edelman, 1992; Freeman, 1997):

The neural networks upon which these interactions are mapped are not “hard-wired.”  The brain continually reconfigures its neural networks based on interaction with the world.  It is quite possible, then, to create new neural pathways as a result of the often-powerful trance experiences occurring on the dance floor.  (p. 148)

As such, dancing at a rave is ripe with transformative potential.  This potential is wrapped up in a collective sensual experience, as every dancer is aware that he or she is part of the collective body.

Performing Sexuality

            In the article “Sexuality and Sexual Identity:  Critical Possibilities for Teaching Dance Appreciation and Dance History,” Ann Dils (2004) asserts that dance history needs to be considered alongside the history of sexuality and that studying dance practice is important in understanding the performance of sexual identities.  Dils (2004) defines sexuality as “our desire for, fantasies about, and realized sexual contact with others” (p. 11).  Sexuality is non-determinate in that it cannot be contained within the heterosexual/homosexual binary and is variable over a lifespan.  Using her classroom experiences as a case study, she discusses ways in which to give students practice describing and thinking about the social messages of movement.  For example, some students may see the dance space as a feminized space, a place to appreciate beauty and be entertained.  As such, when men enter this space, they become feminized, appreciated for their visual appeal rather than their impact or productivity.

            In the article “Belly Dance, Gender Identity, and Social Activism:  Conceptualizing Free and Open Spaces,” Dennis J. Downey and Sandrine Zerbib (2008) investigate the influence of belly dance on participants’ gender identity and involvement in social activism.  The authors argue that leisure activities have an important link to participant identity, and that they can be the source of strong collective identity.

            Belly dance identity includes a basic tension between an “ancient earth woman” identity and a “harem sex symbol” identity.  While the earth woman is associated with matriarchal power and control over women’s own sexuality, the harem sex symbol represents an “Orientalized” symbol of women’s sexuality and availability.  This tension, which simultaneously challenges and reaffirms traditional gender roles, parallels tensions concerning sexuality in third wave feminism (Downey and Zerbib, 2008). 

Downey and Zerbib’s preliminary analysis indicates that length of involvement and level of dance are positively associated with dancers’ body image, and that many participants see belly dance as a means to social change (Downey and Zerbib, 2008).

Stokes (1994) discusses ways in which gender boundaries are performed in music and dance.  He points to Cowan’s recent study of Greek dance (1990), which views dance less as a domain of shared and agreed meaning than one of conflict and control.  While dance is a means of gender socialization, it is also an area where gender categories can be contested.  Social dance brings together unmarried men and women in public space, which is a problem in any society in which social and moral order is in terms of marriage and the confinement of sexuality within the domestic unit (Stokes, 1994).

Global Discourse

                        In the paper “An Insider’s Guide to the Street Dance Subculture in Singapore,” Wong Pao Yi Elke (2011) examines the vibrant subculture of street dance in Singapore, conceptualizing the social space of street dance through processes of construction, consumption, and contestation.  Elke draws attention to the interaction between the local and global street dance communities and studies how these interactions promote greater cultural appreciation:  “The international street dance community has become increasingly interconnected across time and space, resulting in a continuous two-way transmission of cultural production between the local and the global” (p. 8).  Elke argues that street dance subcultures not only transcend geographical borders to establish subculture identities, but also contribute to the flows across the global dancescape.

            In the article “Salsa Dance as Cosmopolitan Formation:  Cooperation, Conflict and Commerce in the Midwest United States,” Joanna Bosse (2013) examines the way in which salsa dance and music have entered a number of global social distribution networks, thereby accumulating meanings beyond its Latin American identity and complicating its associated Latina discourses.  Bosse (2013) presents a case study of a community of amateur salsa dancers in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, arguing that particular social and economic factors have the potential to undermine the genre’s capacity to serve as an expression of Latin American ethnic or racial identity.

            Internationally, salsa has become a music to be danced to rather than a music that is produced.  The popularity of salsa music around the world has led to local salsa dance scenes that are often socially and culturally diverse (Roman-Velazquez, 2002).  In small-town Illinois, Bosse (2013) describes how local salsero elites couched their marginalization of Mexicans in terms of aesthetics or authenticity—the Mexicans did not dance in a Cuban, Puerto Rican, or New York style, which was the style of white, middle-class newcomers, who were the paying customers. 

            “Cosmopolitanism” (Breckenridge, 2002) provides a framework for understanding how a shared set of class-based values joined the local economic and/or educational resident elites—whites, Latin Americans, and other ethnic groups—in opposition to the local working-class Mexicans.  Cosmopolitan formations are often described as “global” in common language.  Because a modernist-capitalist formation dominates much of the globe, commerce influenced the development of the salsa community in small-town Illinois.  Bosse (2013) explains:

So while salsa continued to serve as a signifier of Latino identity and shifting notions of ‘home’, it also became a powerful signifier of a particular type of ‘hip’ cosmopolitanism for a core group of ethnically diverse local elites.  To this latter constituency, fluency in salsa music and dance communicated a fluency in foreign lands and urban centres—a substantial currency for those living in a quiet, rural college town in central Illinois.  (p. 226)

Summary

            Recent literature on dance community and cultural identity explore the ways in which identities are embodied through dance movement.  Social identity is embodied through a powerful affective experience and dancers’ interactions with social alignments (Stokes, 1994).  Dance performance not only reflects culture, but also serves as a medium to negotiate and generate new meaning.  Dance movement processes body memory, and at times collective group memory, such as the national identity in Cyprus (Karayanni, 2006).  Dance may also be used to mobilize cultural identity and preserve unique features of a collective group, as with the Bukusu Kamabeka dance in Kenya (Wanyama, 2011).  Dance has the potential to both reinforce traditional gender roles and challenge them, as gender boundaries are explored and broadened in the performance of dance (Downey and Zerbib, 2008).  As a particular type of music and dance grows in popularity around the world, it becomes subject to global discourses of difference, giving local dance scenes the opportunity to renegotiate meaning in their local contexts (Elke, 2011; Bosse, 2013).  In sum, dance is a valuable area of academic inquiry that requires an interdisciplinary stance.  The links between dance community and cultural identity include its associated concerns with the politics of identity contained within the contested notions of race, class, gender and sexuality.

  

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