Marisol Diaz

Let's Dance Ahora! Art Through Movement

Let’s Dance Ahora! is a combination of two photo series that were shot while I worked at The Riverdale Press as its Chief Photographer and Photo Editor. The black and white series ‘TamiCo. Dancing Inc.,’ was created in a full day photo session in 2014 at the dance studio. While there I saw different age groups come in through the day and display their talents as dancers.

In the rehearsal the students transformed themselves into mystical beings that could capture the human heart with every movement they expressed. Gravity did not exist in that space and neither did boundaries. There they pushed themselves again and again till there was no more to push. And while they pushed their dance to the limit others took another approach.

‘Barefoot Dancing’ series an annual month long summer event that occurs every Thursday in July at Van Cortlandt Park in front of the Van Cortlandt House Museum by the Van Cortlandt Park Conservancy. Every week there are a variation of performers from different cultural backgrounds that bring their own favor of music and dance to the park. Event goers familiar with the extravaganza already know they are in for something very special and on this day it was performers from the non-profit group ‘Something Positive.’

That day they captivated the audience with beats of Tobago and Trinidad. For some it was a culture they were just experiencing for the very first time and while it was different to others it did not stop them from dancing with the group members once invited to join. Here it did not matter how high you jumped, how fine a particular body line was. What mattered is that as an individual you enjoyed and partake and give yourself to something new and uncertain but yet something that in the end you would have experienced and have understood just little bit more. The disparity of cultures would be that mush shorter. And another brick layer on that grass towards a more united community. Because on that they all that attendees were a community, as they danced, laughed with their families and with strangers.