ABOUT PROJECT:  FULL CIRCLE FULL CIRCLE, an exciting partnership between DREAM and Afro-Cuban folklorist/choreographer Jose Francisco Barroso, unites the folkloric dances of Afro-Cuban Rumba and Hip-Hop. These rich cultures have flipped the script on the ugliness of poverty and racism to reflect the beauty and wonder of everyday life. Each art form represents the collective voice of a community – folks finding inspiration and freedom through physical artistic expression. In connecting these dances as they sit on the shoulders of African folk tradition, we experience a complete integration of where we come from, who we are now and where we are going. Through our dances we find immortality. Although Rumba and Hip-Hop were born of different eras and lands, Jose Barroso notes that similar social environments sparked each form's development. He sees both cultures as growing out of an overwhelming need for self-expression and release from existing stresses and oppressive living conditions. To this end, music, dance, clothing, and language were re-created, both to express joy as well as to be tools of transformation. Despite having grown up in Cuba integrating both Hip-Hop and Afro-Cuban tradition within his unique movement style, along with years of choreographing group works within the Afro-Cuban tradition, “Full Circle” is Barroso’s first chance to explore the intersections of these two distinct cultural forms with a professional dance company. Rumba describes a form of community gathering. The word itself is derived from African root words meaning “to gather and dance” or “to have a party.” According to anthropologist Yvonne Daniel ["Rumba, Dance and Social Change in Cuba,"] the tradition “flourished in urban and rural settings where Cuban workers of all colors and occupations [gathered to share] their Creole heritage in music and dance . . . where free blacks gathered to communicate their feelings or comment on their struggles and enslaved Africans were permitted to congregate after work.” These communities lived, gathered, and danced in urban quarters known as "solares" and from the solares the culture of Rumba became popularized as a “vehicle of liberation and protest.” By 1962, the Cuban revolutionary government institutionalized Rumba as a national dance. To this day, Rumba circles at Sabado de la Rumba in Havana draw many Cubans to dance, play music and sing. The dance styles that have contributed to Rumba's ongoing evolution are incredibly diverse, incorporating everything from Yoruba religious songs and rhythms to the reenactment of folktales. FULL CIRCLE explores Hip-Hop as a culture that has developed over the course of the past 30 years, in many respects like a folkloric cultural tradition. It draws on multiple stylistic influences, from the early 1970s Funk styles of Poppin’, Lockin’ and Boogaloo, Salsa and Rumba, 1920s and 30s Jazz and Tap, Native American Fancy Dance and Brazilian Capoeira. According to Hip-Hop dancer and historian Mr. Wiggles, Hip-Hop “in its origin was about celebration, partying, and having fun.” It shares Rumba’s tradition of storytelling in its creation of theatrical characters, gestures, and movement sequences, drawing inspiration from urban environments. It also shares Rumba’s story as a form coming out of culturally diverse urban environments and expressing a need for social change.