Colombia Live: Bringing the rhythm and culture of Colombia to Minnesota
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Martha Ordóñez Daniels has spent most of her life dancing. She started with school performances in her native Colombia. After moving to the United States, she joined a folklore dance group in Atlanta, Ga., where she used to live.
“I enjoyed it so much, but I needed to quit when I moved to the Twin Cities,” she said.
After a few years living in Minnesota, Ordóñez saw a Latin dance group called Fuego Latino (Spanish for Latin Fire). Their shows incorporated Latin rhythms like salsa, merengue and folklore dancing.
“When I saw them performing, I said: ‘Oh I need to know who they are and how can I join them.’”
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And she did.
The group later changed its name to Grupo de Danzas Colombianas (Spanish for Colombian Dance Group) and started expanding. They started to have students of all ages and decided to shift their shows to focus on Colombian folklore.
The group performed at different events in Minnesota, including the Festival of Nations, the Minneapolis Aquatennial, Valley Fair’s “Latin Days” and even became the first dance group to represent their country at the Minnesota State Fair.
Ladies and gentlemen … Colombia Live
After more than two decades, dozens of students and hundreds of performances in the Midwest, Grupo de Danzas Colombianas became an ambassador of Colombian culture in Minnesota. They were well known in the local arts scene, but something was still missing.
Ordóñez, who is now the group’s executive director, explains Grupo de Danzas Colombianas was just too long of a name. If they wanted to continue expanding, they needed to do something about it.
“English speakers couldn’t really pronounce or write it properly, so we wanted to change our name to be more international. Colombia Live … we felt it resonated the most with what we do. It would cause a different impact and both Spanish and English speakers would be able to pronounce it,” she said.
In September, the group officially changed its name to Colombia Live and became a nonprofit that aimed to show Colombia’s best image, break paradigms and make the world — particularly the Midwest — fall in love with Colombia.
Earlier this month, Colombia Live put together its first production which combined both dance and theater. The Wellstone Center in St. Paul vibrated with “La Cucharita” (Spanish for little spoon) during a two-hour, sold-out show that showcased dances from many regions of Colombia.
“‘La Cucharita’ is a song by Jorge Velosa, a famous Colombian artist. It is a well-known song in the country, and it inspired the story of our production: A little boy named Juanito travels from the U.S. to Colombia with his Colombian mother for the first time. It’s his first time so he is really exploring his culture and everything his mom has taught him about it. He [is] given a little bone spoon, and he loses it. So, he travels all over Colombia to find it,” Ordóñez explained.
Among the special guests were Edith Velosa, the songwriter’s sister, and Patricia Torres Ray, a Colombian American politician and former member of the Minnesota Senate. Ordóñez said Sen. Torres was happy with the production.
“Mrs. Torres said it was great to watch the show because there was like a blank space, the Colombian community in Minnesota was lacking something like this, a family show during Christmas time,” Ordóñez said. “We presented 17 dances, six mini sketches and featured 36 dancers who ended up wearing 180 costumes … everybody could see all the effort put in on stage.”
After “La Cucharita’s” success, Colombia Live aspires to keep growing and to reproduce the performance in other places. “One of our goals for 2024 is to bring that production to other places, like outside of Minnesota, to other parts of the U.S. and even outside of the country. In February we are going to start working on another production for the end of next year,” Ordóñez said.
A second family
Throughout the years, Colombia Live has allowed many families to embrace their roots and celebrate their culture through dance.
Nancy Jimenez-Wheeler still remembers the first time she saw Colombia Live perform. It was 2010 and she was at a Colombia Independence Day celebration. After watching them dance, all she could think of was her then-3-year-old daughter Sara.
“Here is where I want my daughter to be,” she thought.
“As a Latina mom, when you are away from your country, you look for a space where you can get a community. And my hope for my daughter was to make her bilingual and bicultural,” Jimenez-Wheeler said. “It is hard. The bilingual part was taken care of because I always spoke Spanish with her, but for the bicultural part you need to get close to people who share the same interests.”
Jimenez-Wheeler approached Ordóñez and enrolled her daughter. Three years later, she enrolled herself.
“One day I said: ‘Well if my daughter is there, I might as well do that’ … it was not like I was a professional dancer or anything, it was just because I was there and said: ‘I'm gonna do this,’ because if I want my daughter to dance, I may need to lead by example,” she said.
Colombia Live is divided into four groups of students: preschoolers, elementary students, teenagers and adults. While most of the choreographies are made within their groups, they also do intergenerational dances.
Dancing with an adult partner allows the younger dancers, who are mostly second-generation Colombian, learn more about their culture through their partner, who sometimes is their family member.
“In Minnesota, there is a huge community of adopted children from Colombia that grow up without knowing much about their country of origin. So those families find us and enroll their kids,” Ordóñez said. “There’s a point where the kids feel deeply connected, they feel they belong and that allows them to flourish. Their families learn a lot, too.”
And that sense of community is one of the reasons why many students, like Nancy Jimenez-Wheeler and her daughter Sara, are still thriving in the group. Sara is now a 16-year-old student. After all those years in Colombia Live, she considers the group to be a second family that allowed her to grow in her identity as a Latina.
“There are other people who are like me, who have grown up in the U.S. and we have family in different countries. Not all of us are Colombian, but a lot of us are and it really helps us to have a group of people who understand us and help us grow through dance and through the appreciation of our culture,” Sara said.
She still remembers her first big live performance at The Festival of Nations back when she was only 6 years old.
“I remember this feeling of ‘everything that we work for leads up to the presentation.’ That we spend all this time making choreographies and practicing them and doing them until they're virtually perfect and then we're able to show others,” she said.
For the past decade, Jimenez-Wheeler and her daughter have been dancing in Colombia Live together. Jimenez-Wheeler says the group allowed her to be herself — happy, loud and full of excitement — and that she wouldn’t change a single minute shared with the group members.
“We stick together because we have a common goal — that is, to promote Colombian culture through dance. And that's what we do, we give our all and that's what we want to show,” she said.
Both women took part in Colombia Live’s production “La Cucharita.” Sara told MPR News the story of the show’s main character, Juanito, resonated with her in many ways.
“I remember I was walking through the halls, on my way to lunch and we got the script, I opened it up and just started crying in the hallway because this is me, this is my story growing up through Colombia Live,” she said.
She says she loves watching her mom perform and how she is always on the side of the stage cheerleading and clapping for her. In “La Cucharita,” they had the opportunity to share a choreography and partner in it.
“After all this time, being in the dance group for so long, it feels like we've built up to this moment,” Sara said. “And being able to share it kind of is like full circle.”
Jimenez-Wheeler explained how special it is to dance with her daughter, how proud she is of her achievements and how she believes Sara the best dancer.
“I think my job as a Latina mom is done.”
