Blog Post Seven: Ballet



The main thing I learned from the folkloric ballet was how connected Ecuador was to its history and indigenous culture. It was so nice to see that some places around the world it is common to remain so connected to your roots. It seems like in the U.S. we are always concerned with moving forward, leaving the past in the past, and trying to be the trend-setters. I’m sure there are cultures within the U.S. that are still very engrained in their history, but it is certainly not common. Here in Ecuador they are proud of their culture and it is a beautiful thing to see.

My favorite part of the ballet was without a doubt the music. The stage performers were fantastic too, but on so many occasions I found myself watching the band rather than the actual actors and dancers. Not only was the music really fun to listen to, but the band members were a lot of fun to watch. They played with so much energy individually while collectively it was evident they were having fun playing together. If they had a CD I would honestly buy it, that’s how much I enjoyed the music.


Dance has the ability to serve as a universal nonverbal communicator because it can be so powerful when done properly and every culture has their own form of it. A great example of this was the ballet. Even though I could not understand the Spanish throughout the performance and I had no knowledge of the culture and influences for the dances, I was still able to receive a message from the show. The ballet was a very sexual show which surprised me, but the show seemed to be trying to convey the message of fertility, child birth, raising a child, and everything that goes into it. You could see the collectivist nature of the culture throughout the show as it appeared to me that the old cliché “it takes a village to raise a child” was very natural to them. I was able to draw all of that and more despite there being no verbal communication. Dance being used as a nonverbal communicator can even be seen outside of the human race with so many different species of animals using dance rituals for mating. This just shows the true power, flexibility, and usefulness of dance as a nonverbal communicator.

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