No Sé Latino Dance Club is the only dance club on Marquette’s campus that highlights different cultures, but specifically Venezuelan culture. Their first ever multicultural showcase occurred April 12 and had 10 dances, each highlighting cultures at Marquette.
Estef Ubac Villa, founder and president of No Sé Latino Dance club and sophomore in the College of Arts & Sciences, spoke with the Marquette Wire.
What made you interested in founding this club?
“I knew that Marquette had two Hispanic dance clubs, but they were not very active. I have danced since I was five years old, it was how I helped my mental health and I wanted to transmit that to other people. I, believe it or not, created the club in around one week. Every day, I would beg to approve this club. After one week of the club being approved, we had already had our first meeting.”
What went into building this club?
“The reality is, here at Marquette, we only focus on one Hispanic country and it’s Mexico. I am from Venezuela, and I feel like everyone from Hispanic countries around the world have their own culture and own dances. And highlighting that is something that we miss here at Marquette, which is why I wanted to have this club and perform, so we could highlight all of the different cultures.”
Describe what the showcase was?
“The showcase is something we did to celebrate our own culture, and other cultures too. Everyone was welcome. One thing we wanted was to focus on the Hispanic cultures, different types of dances and different things that we do. Even with the costumes, we wanted to be respectful to every single culture. But at the same time, we wanted to welcome it to everyone and to the community, and transmit to everyone that ‘Here we are, as a Hispanic community.’”
Explain the preparations you had to go through for the showcase?
“I have been preparing for almost a year and rehearsing since December. I created the club in February 2023. In April, I brought the idea to my co-worker [Aixa Rodríguez, Latin American Student Organization president] and she was like ‘Yes, let’s do it.’ Without her, none of this would be possible at all. And exactly one year ago, we booked Weasler Auditorium, started looking for dancers. Marquette said ‘Yes’ to the idea, and they were very excited to bring different cultures here. We also had to get translators for the Hispanic families who may not know English, because most importantly we just wanted to have everyone understand and enjoy.”
What goes into picking the music for each dance?
“Picking the music is really particular. We had to choose our leaders, within the club, for each dance based on where that leader is from. For example, for our Cuban dance, we have a Cuban do that, for our Puerto Rico dance, we have a Puerto Rican do that and the same goes for our Venezuela and Mexico one. We wanted representation for all cultures, and that’s how we transmitted it.”
How did you come up with the choreography?
“For each of the 10 dances, we had a leader, but we all collaborated together which really helped everyone to be able to share their opinion. Something that we wanted to do too was make sure that even though a dance was from a specific country, we wanted anyone to be able to be a part of it. Each dance was around five minutes, split up between around five clips of different songs.”
What is something special to you about this club?
“Being able to have the opportunity to bring new cultures to people and to be able to give them another tradition and culture, I am so proud of. I am also so grateful to be able to perform in front of my mom, and transmit all of the cultures to the Marquette community.”
For more information about No Sé Latino Dance Club, visit their Instagram page.
This story was written by Sophie Goldstein. She can be reached at [email protected].
