Our Peruvian dancer!

Today, our five year old, Adeline, had the privilege of performing the three traditional Peruvian dances at school to kick off the season of celebrating Peru's Independence Day (which is July 28th). She did a wonderful job, you would have thought she was Peruvian! I suppose in heart she is since she moved to Peru as a baby. In her current school, as they study the 3 regions of Peru, they also learn the dance of that region.

So, the first dance is the Marinera, a coastal dance of Peru, generally called the "National Dance of Peru." Marinera is a graceful and romantic couple's dance that uses handkerchiefs as props. Adeline was able to borrow a traditional Marinera dress of one of her teachers. Her dance partner was actual German, the only other international student in her class, but the two communicate in Spanish with no problem:-)


The second is the Andean (mountain) dance called the Wayno, named after a genre of popular Andean music. The dance consists of an agile and vigorous stamping of the feet during which the man follows the woman, opposite to front, touching her with his shoulders after having turned around. The movements are very happy and child like.

And the third they performed is one of many Amazon jungle dances. The girls each have a basket, mostly filled with tasty fruit, but one of the girls will have a snake in her basket. The dance begins with boys dance around the girls looking in their baskets. . .
. . .and later the girls get up and dance a fun energetic dance with the boys.