In Search of Bodily Styles of Culture through the Learning of ""Ethnic"" Dance among Dominican Youth in New York City : Featuring the Hip Hop Traffic

Dancing is indispensable to Dominican life. At the same time, the popularity of Hip Hop has been influential to the youth in the Dominican neighborhood in New York City. This paper explores how the learning of Dominican dances has affected the youth in terms of the knowing of ""how to move"". I examine the developing desire of the youth for finding of African and Dominican styles in quotidian lives, as well as in Hip Hop and Dominican dance lessons, as a result of the learning of dances. The experiences as blacks in the US society are certainly implicated in their findings of ""African"" styles. Paying attentions to the achievements through the dance practices, such as self-esteem and sophisticated eyes towards bodily movements, I point out the subjective construction of being a person as Dominican and as black in their daily negotiations. Moreover, the bodily experience, characterized as ""flow"" invites them to learn more about the activities that involve their bodies, which in this case, dancing. In observing the people in the neighborhood, they have come to be aware of essential bodily styles that are expressed in behaviors and gestures. And they have implicitly studied it through the dances both in Dominican dances and Hip Hop. Through this whole process, they developed ""bodily bilingualism"", motivated by the dance lessons. The ""bodily bilingualism"" further promotes the adhesion to their living in the Hip Hop world in the Dominican neighborhood