People have been getting their groove on for thousands of years to celebrate, to worship, even to train for battle. Cave paintings from India show figures dancing 9,000 years ago. Egyptians were getting down by 2500 BCE as part of rituals and festivals. These days, we may like to party like it’s 1999, but dance has always been much more than a party trick; it’s an important reflection of who we are, where we come from, and what we value.
That’s something I learned during my Fulbright research grant in Honduras when I joined two folkloric dance groups in the small city of Siguatepeque. I rehearsed polka marches, learned how to throw a skirt into rhythmic waves, and even paraded through the main street in full costume for the city’s Festival of the Pines. What I was really experiencing, though, was a tiny insight into another culture.
My journey to that parade started years earlier on a very different kind of dance floor. I discovered ballroom dancing as a student at Purdue University in 2019, just in time for the pandemic to shut it all down. Instead of floating across polished wood, I was stomping out cha-cha basics on the carpet of my room, wobbling in heels that had no business interacting with shag fibers. I studied YouTube videos, ran into too-close walls, and practiced arm styling in front of a laptop camera. When competitions finally returned, I was hungry to make up for lost time.
As an engineer, I love the precision ballroom dance demands. Every toe and fingertip has a proper place, weight shifts are deliberate, and turns have an exact, measurable angle. Through practiced moves, we could express beautiful shapes and calculated emotions, but was something missing?
This question felt especially urgent as I realized how many ballroom staples (Cha Cha, Rumba, Samba, Paso Doble, Tango) were born from Latin American and Afro-Latin traditions. In competition, we know when to place our heel, but do we know whose stories we are carrying? When we step in front of cameras, posing with glimmering medals in flashy dresses, do we know what we are honoring?
In Honduras, I was immersed in a very different world of dance. Folkloric rehearsals began not with counts and angles, but with stories. In performances, spoken introductions at the start of each song reminded audiences (and dancers) what our dance was meant to represent. The goal was never perfection, but pride. Costumes are not just beautiful but symbolic, echoing regional fabrics and histories. Props nod to agricultural or artisanal practices from specific towns. Movements reenact courtships and celebrations that once defined daily life. Folkloric dance is inseparable from culture because it was born as culture; it is a living, moving archive.
I would never dance these steps with the same fluency as those who grew up inside these traditions. But that was never the point. Instead, I watched closely, listened to the lyrics, and followed the lead of my fellow dancers. I let the community carry me, awkwardness and all. It was in those moments that I remembered what drew me to dance in the first place: the way movement becomes its own language.
Because dances are conversations. They are exchanges of energy, trust, and rhythm shared across partners, across generations, across cultures. Every time we step onto a ballroom floor, we are not only competing in the moment but stepping into the footprints of countless dancers before us. The rhinestones, fake tans, and spotlights are adaptations, but beneath them lies a history of people who danced these rhythms as part of their lives.
To honor that lineage, we must learn it. We must remember that ballroom is not just technique, but inheritance, one that we borrow from cultures not our own. Folkloric dance in Honduras reminded me of that responsibility, and of the gift it is to be welcomed into traditions that are both fragile and enduring.
These days, I measure the angle of my frame as carefully as ever, but I measure something else too: the stories embedded in the music. I think about the generations who danced before me, and the cultures that shaped the steps I take for granted. Gratitude fills me, not just for the beauty of the dance, but also for the roots that allow it to shine.
