Wattle Hollow Event
Afro-Haitian Dance – June 13-14
Celebrating the Warrior Goddess Oya
…. Heather says: “The Orisha Oya is associated with cemeteries as well as marketplace transactions! She can transform into a buffalo. She calls tornadoes and forked lightning. She is sometimes called “the tearer.” Kind of a scorpio-esque character. And her colors are dark maroon and a rainbow of 9 colors together.”
About Heather Chappell
Heather Chappell teaches popular and folkloric Afro-Cuban dance. Along with rhythm and correct placement, she draws her students attentions to the contrasting elements of controlled/free, feminine/masculine, and joyful/aggressive expressions in dances including the orishas, pal, rumba, conga and son.
In Cuba, she apprenticed under Cuban cultural historians, playwrights, actors, musicians and professional dancers at Cutumba Ballet Forlkorico.
After studying dance at Duke University, Lakota Indian Reservation, the University of Washington and Los Angeles, she found her true match in the eclectic Cuban mix of French, Spanish, Haitian and West African heritages. (And she adds, there is a bit of Scottish and Tahitian flavor that she cannot do without.) A Master of Arts degree in Cultural Anthropology helped her to make sense of all of this.
Herself a product of an Arkansas cotton farmer and a theater director, Heather has combined the earthy and the dramatic in perhaps unlikely places. She took oral histories of wacipi dancers and studied with yuwipi prayer-song musicians. She has taught dance in Compton, CA’s middle schools and worked with South Asian immigrant teens to create dance works in Seattle, WA.
Heather presently serves as the dance instructor at Benton County School of the Arts.
Cost: $100 includes food and lodging.