DANCE BEYOND THE SCENE
Marianela Boán does not cease in its efforts towards making contemporary dance transcends the usual audience of theater halls. We know we must educate openly in a relatively new aesthetic with which ordinary people have not been in contact. We also know about the prejudices towards the dancer male; and of the stereotypes that approve dance styles as the classical and folkloric, to the detriment of modern and contemporary. Art reaches out to people, beautiful people who appropriate those images, style, and technique, which express and reflect their aesthetic and intellectual needs whenever the opportunity is within reach; whenever someone or many, individuals and institutions strive to open up access to a world of possibilities.
Marianela Boán calls for OPEN DANCE EVENTS in which the public, knowing the dance or not, observes improvisation sessions performed by members of the company, and ends by joining and interacting with them; in a fascinating discovery of their abilities and sensibility. Each open dance floor attracts more viewers; more and more young men dare to jump on stage and free themselves from their fears.
She moves the National Company out of the studio and creates CITY IN DANCE, a festival in which dance and architecture come together in the streets and emblematic sites of Santo Domingo's Colonial City. The initial surprise of the passers-by soon makes empathy with that different art, and they join the dancers in the manifestation of joy. In the Christopher Colombus Park a human river flows that vibrates with the movements of the dancers, incorporates itself, imitates them, and forms their collective dance. To the astonishment of the Columbus statue, a spectacle of these times develops, but he does not manage to understand.
The flame has ignited. Then, they develop successive visits to schools of the capital city, in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, bringing a didactic show of contemporary dance. Boán explains to the students, captivating them, what is contemporary dance all about. Then, the dancers of the CNDC show fragments of works as they tell how they became dancers and talk about the life of a dancer. This is how teenagers take this art, in introductory classes that break shyness and find followers, many of them male; who between shy smiles at the beginning start joining the dancers and end up dancing freely, applauded by their less determined colleagues.
They also perform in prisons such as Najayo Women, promoted by the Ministry of Culture, with magnificent results.
A pilot project of the First Lady of the Republic Office: Angels of Culture; has several of the members of the CNDC as instructors in the most humble neighborhoods of the city. The experience is fascinating. Dozens of children's faces light up discovering the dance, training each Saturday of enlightenment for them until reaching, in about two years, skills that prove the immense potential of Dominican children and youth, if they are provided the conditions to fully develop them.