(starting 10 AM Saturday and ending at Noon Sunday)

Celebrating Obatala

In this year’s Afro Caribbean dance workshop, we will dance for several orishas, but we will look in depth at the orisha Obatala. In the Yoruba pantheon, Obatala is an ancient man/woman dressed in luminous white cloth with lustrous white hair. She/he is associated with the intellect, poetic thoughts, patience, purification, and with people who have physical and mental defects as well as intelligence/neuroses, and those who fight for justice. Obatala is the symbol of resurrection, the blank canvas, the white cloth. Patron of introverts, writers, and poets. She/he goes to battle to stand behind those who speak the truth or work for peace. Obatala is the judge, keeper of the peace, brilliant and retarded, perfect and deformed, She/he whips the arrogant and blesses them with humility.

This orisha rules the head and is associated with clouds, the number 8, the colors white and silver. Obatala loves owls, doves, snails, and elephants, white flowers, and cotton. Obatala likes to eat coconut, arroz con leche, pears, and black-eyed peas. The dance for Obatala honors the patience and wisdom of the elderly, the handicapped, the gifted, and all those who persevere.

Heather Burns

About Heather Burns

Heather Burns teaches popular and folkloric Afro-Cuban and Afro-Haitian 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.

In Cuba, she apprenticed under Cuban cultural historians, playwrights, actors, musicians and professional dancers at Cutumba Ballet Forlkorico. After studying dance at Duke University, the 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 lives and teaches in Oklahoma, working as a great artist with schools and dance companies throughout the region, and with the dance department at the University of Central Oklahoma.

Cost: $100 (but talk to us if you lack funds!)  includes food and lodging.

Retreat Registration Form

July  17 & 18 (10 AM Saturday and ending at Noon Sunday)

In this dance weekend we will explore art, song, poetry, and dance for Yemaya, the Yoruban Orisha of the living Ocean, considered the Mother of All. She is strongly protective and cares deeply for all Her children, comforting them and cleansing them of sorrow.

Altar of Yemaya

As an embryo we all spend the first moments of our lives swimming in a warm sea of amniotic fluid inside our mother’s womb. We must transform and evolve through the form much as a fish before becoming a human baby. Yemaya dresses herself in seven skirts of blue and white. Like the seas and profound lakes she is deep.

Yemaya was brought to the New World with the African Diaspora. In Brazilian Candomblé and Haitian Vodou she is worshipped as an Ocean/Moon-goddess.

Symbols and Sacred Objects of Yemaya: Ocean, mermaids, the virgin Mary, New Year’s Eve, February 2, the North Star, half moon, dreams, indigo, pound cake, boats and ships, sacred dance, and the Number 7, all sea creatures, seaweed and other plants that grow in the ocean, silver, pearls, mother of pearl, coral, moonstone, crystal quartz, turquoise, and any blue gem or bead.

Heather will be joined by Jeff Porter, who has recently studied Yemaya in Africa, will lead the drum class and accompany the dancing.

Heather Burns

About Heather Burns

Heather Burns teaches popular and folkloric Afro-Cuban and Afro-Haitian  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.

In Cuba, she apprenticed under Cuban cultural historians, playwrights, actors, musicians and professional dancers at Cutumba Ballet Forlkorico. After studying dance at Duke University, the 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 lives and teaches in Oklahoma, working as a great artist with schools and dance companies throughout the region, and with the dance department at the University of Central Oklahoma.

Cost: $100 includes food and lodging.

Retreat Registration Form

…. 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.

Retreat Registration Form