I started choreographing dances when I was 8 years old on the sandy arroyo bed outside of my familia’s palapa, our hut. I would rally with some pretty intense authority all the kids form my dusty neighborhood. ”¡Vamos, Wilbert, àndale Yeni, apùrate Zujey!” I would enthusiastically yell. ”¡Vamos a bailar!” We are going to dance, I would scream with my hands flung to the cloudless Central Mexican sky.

I would show them the moves i had been working on and then place them and show them their exists and entrances. I would sit on the sand in front of them and demand they show me over and over again the dance from the top of the choreography. I would work them.

Wilbert wouldn’t dance, so he acted as our DJ. Yelapa had no electricity in 1988 and my family did not own a battery-operated tape deck yet. Wilbert had for his DJ tunes a Christmas Card that played jingle bells whenever you opened it. He would proudly sit on the stone steps that led to my palapa, waiting for me to signal him to open the card so that the dancers could begin the precious choreography.

Looking back at the willingness of the kids in my neighborhood to come and be danced by my desire to create choreography baffles me. They could have said no. They didn’t ever try to suggest the dance movement be different. The happily participated in a dance that at first we performed mostly for my mom, my step dad Ron and Yoda the cat. And then after a while we got to perform several times in front of the whole village of Yelapa and even down the coast in the lovely village of Majahuitas.

It makes me cry now to think of their trust in me. How blessed I have been.

The funny thing is that I am still in deep love with moving people with my hands flung to the sky beckoning them to follow my dance steps and choreography. I have been teaching dance for 8 years. Although the steps are radically different now then the jingle bell pieces of my past. Now I get to hold sacred a dance form from a rich ancestry rooted in West Africa! And i cannot help but marvel at the fact that Authentic People come not once but two times a week to dance with me…. As if that were not incredible enough, twice a week instead of Wilbert opening the Christmas Card for the music, I have Planet Djembe and Swami with his N’Goma drums show up and play their hearts out for every class.

When I attended my very first West African Dance class in 1996, I could have not predicted that in 15 years I would have my very own dance studio where I would have the honor of teaching a beautiful Tribe of People West and Central African Inspired Dance. My very own studio that could be the home of my dreams as well as a Sacred Space for me to bring my teachers to.

On April 1st, 2011 I opened with my Partner Alok Appadurai The Movement Shala, a Sacred Space where I get to make Choreography from my heart with Impassioned Drummers and Divinely Gorgeous Tribe People of Tucson. I am blessed.

Here is my second photo shoot in my new dance, photography and social movement studio. Today I had the deep, deep honor of Photographing who I call my Best Girlfriend because she is such Pure, Unconditional Love who loves me in a way that I have rarely felt from another Human. She is completely free from judgment and expectations from me and she is forever expanding my heart with her generous Beauty. I am in awe of her, I am her servant in love.