Library Celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month with Peruvian Dance, Music

The music and dance of Peru can transport you to the nation's coastal regions, down the Amazon and deep into the heart of the Andes.

In celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month, the West Orange Public Library presents a free evening of Peruvian dance, music and song 7 p.m., Wednesday, by the Arts and Folklore Academy of Harrison.

Whether you are part of the thriving township Peruvian community or new to Peruvian dance and music, prepare to participate in this interactive program or just watch, listen and enjoy.

The Arts and Folklore Academy's professional dance group has performed on Latin-American televisions shows and participated in competitions and event nationwide and in Peru and Canada.

Olga Quispe, the academy's co-founder, director and one of the participating dancers talked about her school, its professional dance troupe and dancing.

"I love to dance, I live to dance," she said.

"We perform at schools, colleges, cultural centers, and at festivals throughout the tri-state area," Quispe said. "Sometimes no one in the audience is Peruvian, but everyone loves it."

Hispanic Heritage Month honors the culture and traditions of those who come to the United States from Spain and the Spanish-speaking countries of Central America, South America and the Caribbean. Since 1988, it has been celebrated from Sept. 15 through Oct. 15.

The library has close ties with the Hispanic population in West Orange, offering programs which include bilingual story telling for children, outreach and a collection of Spanish language classic literature, popular novels and non-fiction.

Carlos Perez, a Spanish teacher at West Orange High School, worked extensively with librarians Catherine LaBelle and Debra Sarr on the collection and helped make this event happen. Perez lived in the township when he came with his family to the United States from Peru in 1992.

"One day in 2007, my family and I were walking in Kearny and heard 'Marinera,' a variation of Peruvian music, coming from a dance studio," Perez said.

"We walked inside and saw the instructor giving a lesson to some students. We became members of the school the next week. The school later relocated to Harrison. Now, I am its event coordinator and one of its performers."

Perez and Quispe are frequent dance partners in both competitions and in performances.

"Olga, the other dancers and I will perform Marinera Norteña, Festejo and Selva," Perez said.

The Marinera Norteña is a romantic reenactment in dance of courtship from the northern and coastal regions of Peru. It blends the different cultures of Peru. Festejo is a very popular Afro-Peruvian dance that originated in Lima. It is now danced by Peruvians of all backgrounds.

Selva is a dance named for the vast rain forest region of eastern Peru that extends from the Amazon to the foothills of the Andes.

There will be bilingual descriptions of each dance and a nine year old student will sing in Quechua, the native language of the Incas, one of the indigenous people of Peru.