"U-C-Ri-ver-side Come On!!!”

“U-C-Ri-ver-side Come On!!!” was the chant that our group, Juicy R came up with to shout loud and proud for the Brazilian dance parade. What a challenge it was to get fourteen people in a group together, all at the same time, and create a parade from a scratch in a matter of weeks! This was the challenge presented to us by our Professor Anna Scott of the third class in the Latin American CHASS sequence Brazilian Dance.

As we brainstormed ideas for our team name, someone blurted a catchy and original idea- “Juicy R.” We then decided that out main theme would be the lack of school spirit on the UCR campus, due to the divisions within our social categories including race, gender, religious background and sexual orientation. Despite ours being one of the most diverse campuses in the entire country, it still lacks a certain amount of assimilation within the social niches. Rather than being one large collection of various backgrounds, our school is more separated into different groupings. With our parade, we hoped to portray the way our campus divides itself, and manages to maintain a distance from what is outside our comfort zone by dividing ourselves into three groups. We also wanted to convey the way that it should be by uniting and cooperating as one in the final dance sequence.

By separating into three groups, we made a social commentary about how many students choose to stay with their own clicks, rather than experiencing new things by meeting new people. We split into teams under the different letters of our school- UCR. This was an obvious intention to call out our campus on the situation we were presenting. Each team had a choreographer- the U’s were lead by Melissa Rivera, while Stephanie Contreras was the head of the C’s, and I (Axel Santana) directed the R’s. We chose our own music to dance to, whatever we felt comfortable with that had some sort of Afro-Brazilian influence. The “U” team shook their hips to an “M.I.A.esque” modern Brazilian funk song by Bondo Do Role. While the “C” crew got jazzy with the Soul Bossa Nova by Quincy Jones, and the “R” squad broke it down to some of Africa’s best Congolese grooves by Africa Dance Machine. Each group wore blue shirts with their respective teams’ letter in gold (for the school colors in the essence of school spirit). As each group performed, the other two stood in the background engaging in mockery and using sign language to debunk the performing groups’ performance. This represents the lack of acceptance of other social groups at our school, and how hard it is for people to engage one another if not from the same click. The dances represented the groups of people expressing themselves and their beliefs, backgrounds and place in society. While the other groups’ mockery represented people’s lack of willingness to embrace others despite the differences in religion, ethnicity and other social categories.

At the end of the dance, the three groups came to realize that they were not so different after all, and decided to join forces by learning one another’s dance moves. As we performed as one, we characterized the unity that we hoped to perpetuate through this parade in the UCR community. We joyfully pulled out our blue and gold streamers and rejoiced to the song “Celebration” by Kool and the Gang. This last sequence is meant to teach us all a lesson in harmony and unity. As corny as it sounds, we could all benefit from a little more love from our neighbor.

Even I learned a lot from this working on this project. Working together with so many other people posed a challenge for us. It was quite difficult to gather all fourteen of us at one time in one place. This was probably the biggest challenge for us, and it taught me a lesson in teamwork and communication. Since I was in charge of one of the dance sequences, as choreographer I had the tremendous responsibility of teaching an organized series of steps and movements to a group of inexperienced dancers. This proved to be especially hard for those who are a bit uncoordinated, not to mention any names. . . I believe our performance went fairly well, but if I could change something it would have to be the energy of the dance. Our moves were on fire, but I believe we needed to be more expressive in our presentation of the theme, since it was school spirit.

Overall, it was a great learning experience, and I could not have asked for a better, more entertaining group of individuals to work with on this project. Shout-outs to all my homies from Juicy R!!! Long live the Juicies! I love you guys.