Presented in the format of bomba’s cypher-like batey, this interactive lecture/demonstration reflects on how this centuries-old AfroRican dance/drum/song offers unique understandings of dance and place across diasporic geographies. Following an introduction to bomba’s sonic and corporeal principles, this lecture traces how bomba routes deeper and different engagements with Puerto Rican history, and Puerto Rico as both a Caribbean and Latin American place.
Jade Power-Sotomayor is a Cali-Rican educator, scholar and performer who works as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance at UC San Diego. Her forthcoming monograph from NYU Press ¡Habla!:Speaking Bodies Dancing Our América theorizes the concept of "embodied code-switching" across distinct social dance spaces, examining how relationships between dancing and sounding indexes counter-histories rooted in Latinidad’s blackness that continue to challenge the violent afterlives of the colonial encounter. She has published in Centro Journal for Puerto Rican Studies, TDR, Theatre Journal, The Oxford Handbook of Theatre and Dance, Latino Studies Journal, Latin American Theatre Review, and Performance Matters. Her articles “Moving Borders and Dancing in Place: Son jarocho’s Speaking Bodies at the Fandango Fronterizo,” “Corporeal Sounding: Listening to Bomba Dance, Listening to puertorriqueñxs,” and “Un Llanto Colectivo: A PerformaProtesta” have been recognized with awards from the Dance Studies Association (DSA), American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR), Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE), and the American Theatre and Drama Society (ATDS). She is also a dramaturg and co-directs and performs with the San Diego-based group Bomba Liberté. She is currently developing a bomba-based work for young Boricua women in Oakland inspired by Taína cacique and poet Anacaona.
This event is funded by the Global Arts and Humanities Discovery Theme Grant and the Ohio Hispanic Heritage Grant, with support from The Ohio State University Department of Dance, the Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design, the Latinx Studies Program and the Center for Latin American Studies.
