By Raena Hunter Doty Arts & Features Editor By Sarah Daponde Staff Writer The Center for Inclusive Excellence (CIE) hosted a Taste of Culture event Oct. 15 to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month. The event featured Latin American cuisine and a small dance lesson in some Caribbean styles, held by Massy Paulino, director of Ritmos Dance Studio, which works to preserve Latin American culture. Jerome Burke said the CIE did quite a bit to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, including setting up a small bodega display in the center, partnering with the Danforth Art Museum to display art by Hispanic artists in the center, and tabling across FSU’s campus. He said since he took over as the director of the CIE, he’s tried to implement more programming to respond to the student desire to see events like Taste of Culture. He added the Taste of Culture series started last fall, during his first semester as the CIE director, and since last year’s events were so successful, they continued the series as it was. “If it’s not broken, not gonna fix it,” Burke said. He said the series stems from a student desire to see events that reflect their heritages and identities. For this month’s Taste of Culture event, Burke said he wanted to make the event fun, but also educational. He said though having fun is important, he wanted to make sure attendees understood “what these dances mean, how these dance forms are a sign of liberation, how these forms of expression are a sign of community and strength. “A lot of times we do these dances and we’re just sweating and we’re having fun, which is good, but there are a lot of meanings if you are able to drill down,” he added. Ritmos Dance Studio, based out of Worcester, works with communities in the area to educate others on Latin American styles of dance and their cultural importance. Paulino began the workshop with a brief history on styles of dance that originated from the Dominican Republic, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. She began with merengue, both a style of music and the national dance of the Dominican Republic, which she said originated in the late 1800s. Paulino said there are two theories on how merengue dancing originated, adding that one seemed more probable than the other. One theory - the one less likely to be true - was about a soldier returning from war and dancing with a limp. She said the second theory was merengue was based on European ballroom dancing and transformed into a new style of dance by Afro-Dominicans. She added the artist most commonly associated with merengue is Juan Luis Guerra who popularized it in the U.S. after studying at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. The next style of dance Paulino introduced was bachata, which also originated in the Dominican Republic, she said. This style was considered more scandalous than merengue when it first appeared in the late ’60s. Paulino said it became popular in what she described as “underground brothel areas” due to the dictatorship of the time. She compared it to “Dirty Dancing” and Elvis’ controversial dancing style. Bachata became more accepted and widespread in the 1980s and 1990s, as more immigration brought this style of dance to a larger community, she added. She said artists like Romeo Santos, Prince Royce, and Usher were notable for helping popularize bachata, fusing it with other styles of music, such as jazz and rhythm and blues. Paulino said the next dance would not be from the Dominican Republic, and she focused on the Caribbean because there were too many styles of dance to demonstrate all of them in a single night. She said even among countries in the Caribbean, there were many styles caused by cultural intermingling between people from different places. “Imagine showing up to Puerto Rico, and having an instrument that they’ve never seen before and they're like, ‘Hold up, wait, we’re going to figure out how to use this.’ And then they start influencing one another,” she said. Paulino said this is the origin of salsa dancing, which started in Cuba under the name “son,” when the African diaspora made it to the Americas and shared their instruments, including the conga. She said son dancing became popular in Puerto Rico, which is where a lot of people say salsa originates. Then when a lot of immigration started and Caribbean people started moving to the U.S., particularly New York, different cultures adapted it and it became known as “salsa.” Paulino added, “It was son - but son influenced by Puerto Rico, influenced by the Dominican Republic, influenced by everything else that came along the way.” She said there were two different types of clubs at this time - those in which Latin American musicians were playing and those in which jazz musicians were playing. Paulino added that hearing the jazz instruments brought a new influence to the Latin clubs. “Now we add the bass, now we add the keys, now we add so many new instruments,” Paulino said, describing how salsa artists have added jazz to their style of music. She said this point in time was when the style began to be formally known as “salsa,” because it was a mash-up of all different types of music. One artist who had been performing salsa before it even had a name was Celia Cruz, a Cuban musician, Paulino added. She said salsa is a good example of what happens when many cultures mix together. When it was time for Paulino to demonstrate how to salsa, she said, “It is like we’re dancing on a track,” to describe the in-line motion of the dance. In an interview after the event, Paulino said she’s been involved with Ritmos - which is Spanish for “rhythm” - since she was a child and she learned dance with the studio. She took on the role of director in 2010. She said Ritmos holds classes for Latin American styles of dance, and they also do a lot of work outside the dance studio. Paulino added Ritmos holds workshops with schools and attends events at local Hispanic Heritage Month functions. Their work includes advocacy to make Hispanic culture accessible to everyone. She said the studio tries to make sure to remember that “movement is not something that can only happen when you’re able-bodied.” Paulino added any type of body can dance and she wants to make sure Ritmos is “inclusive of everyone.” She said her favorite part of her job at Ritmos is seeing new dancers. “I like seeing where it clicks for people,” she added. Paulino said she enjoys teaching people types of dance they can take with them to many different places, whether it be a quinceñera, a family party, or a dance club. She added a big part of her passion for teaching people to dance stems from her own background as a clinical social worker and dance movement therapist. “I always want to make sure movement and mental health are being tied together,” Paulino said.