Dancing above and beyond

Winter Term is the time when you can pay 50 dollars to ferment your own cheese. If you are unhappy with the usual seaweed-colored Adirondack chairs that grace the lawn every fall, you can learn how to make your own and paint it sky-blue.

Students who crave pure honey straight from the hive can even delve into the world of beekeeping. Every January, the list of Winter Term Workshops arrives to showcase the weird and wonderful of Middlebury College.

Workshop instructors Christine Valentin ’12, Alex Siega ’12.5, Amanda Lee ’11 and Adrienne Chuck ’10 are just a few of the students putting their little-known talents on display in order to impart the wisdom of their crafts. All four practice forms of dance just a tad askew of the mainstream, from bellying dancing to hula.

Each one, however, garnered students’ enthusiastic responses to learning steps not ordinarily attributed to the average college student.

New York native Valentin first found herself interested in belly dancing at only 11 years of age. Watching Brazilian soap operas dubbed in Spanish, she became entranced by the costumes and music of the show.

Eventually her desire to try the dance she saw on TV came to fruition, and she enrolled in a six-week crash course in the Bronx.

“My cousin and I went and everyday, we’d come out with our tongues hanging out on the floor. It was so hard,” she said.

Throughout the years, Valentin continued to dance, finding a therapeutic release in the movement. “I’d dance, and I’d forget about whatever happened,” she explained. “It’s amazing. It’s something I’m really passionate about. It’s one of those things that’s up there with food, family and friends — you can’t live without it.”

Teaching a style that fuses together many different countries’ traditions, Valentin tries to communicate a message of enjoyment and equality in her workshop. “A lot of people think you have to have a belly to belly-dance or you have to be really skinny to belly dance,” she said. “And you have girls saying, ‘I’m too big,’ ‘I’m too small,’ ‘I’m too this,’ ‘I’m too that,’ ‘I’m too old,’ and it’s really not about that. Anyone can do it.”

Siega and Lee, on the other hand, teach a very different type of dance, equally as foreign to Americans — Irish step dance. At the age of four, Siega was already tugging on her mom’s sleeve, begging to investigate this piece of her cultural background. By 2006, she had won the North American Nationals for Irish Dancing and placed 59th in the world. Similarly, Lee’s interest arose out of a desire to discover her heritage.

The two girls connected when Siega arrived at Middlebury in 2009 and joined the Irish Cultural Club on campus.

The unusual style of dance in which men’s and women’s feet move in rapid momentum from stationary torsos looks just as difficult as it sounds. To teach students, Siega explained, many instructors tape or tie bungee cords around midsections, restraining arms from any excess movement.

Lee demonstrated that she used to hold a measuring stick behind her back in order to affect the stance.

The origins of the style are unclear and conflicting theories of all mythic proportions exist. Siega elucidated upon one of her favorites, in which the British’s desire to hinder Irish fun resulted in a dance that didn’t even originally look like a dance. “And as the Irish were dancing,” Siega explained laughing at the strangeness of the origin, “They’d have their arms by their sides and only be moving their feet, and the British would say, ‘Oh they’re not really doing anything. Whatever. They’re probably just bouncing up and down strangely.’”

The difficulty of the style, however, has not discouraged students from registering for the course. In fact, Lee said that it is the challenge that drew her to it and keeps her practicing to this day.

Foremost, though, it is the way the dance brings her closer to her Irish background that encourages her continued investment in the activity.

“I mean, I’m not really going to learn Gaelic,” she said. “I guess I could, at Middlebury.”

Likewise, Chuck’s ties to hula are also cultural. Growing up in Hawaii, the dance was an integral part of life on the island. When Chuck saw a halau, a group of hula dancers, perform one day, she began to learn hula, and became very passionate about the dance as a teenager when her school put on May Day performances.

Additionally, to perform in these shows, Chuck learned Samoan, Tahitian and Maori styles that has led to her interest in dance as a general form of expression and her membership in Riddim World Dance Troupe.

Although her first time teaching this particular workshop, Chuck has taught hula to students every year for the International Student Organization show. With this course, however, the senior plans to bring pieces of Hawaiian culture into the classroom. Rather than sticking to one style, Chuck plans to show her students a variety of styles, from modern to traditional to Westernized.

When asked why she continues the form, Chuck said, “My freshman year, when I used to get homesick, I used to dance hula. I used to listen Hawaiian music and dance hula. It very much embodies Hawaii and what I love about Hawaii. And it’s very much an expressive style of dancing. I’ve done other types of dancing, and it sometimes doesn’t feel as real or genuine as hula does because for hula, you’re just dancing your heart, and it’s telling a story. I think it’s one of the most beautiful styles of dance.”

For beauty or culture or an indescribable love of the dance, all four students try weekly to communicate the necessary facets of their styles to students. After all, as a reprieve from homework, dancing is not a bad option. Who knows? Maybe it’ll come in handy at the next Late Night Dance Party.

At the very least, you’ll walk away with a piece of someone’s culture, and some knowledge they don’t teach at every college. Except for here.