Obrigado! daCi in Brazil.

In August 2003, Marilyn Berrett and thirteen students from Brigham Young University attended the Dance and the Child international conference in Salavador Bahia, Brazil. Artistic Director Berrett and her students are members of BYU dance company, Kinnect, and perform and teach the creative process in Utah elementary and middle schools. The trip was founded by a BYU grant flint encourages student and faculty involvement in collaborative research. Each student also paid $350 for expenses, including daCi membership.

For six days the fourteen members of Kinnect shook, swayed, and stomped among more than eleven hundred dancers from twenty-three countries, including Africa, Jamaica, Finland, Switzerland, Croatia, Argentina, Sweden, Germany, Canada, and of course Brazil. Children ages 4 In 18 (many came in groups from studios, schools, and children's performance companies), university, students, teachers, choreographers, performers, artistic directors, and dance researchers came together with one common goal: to increase and develop opportunities for young people throughout the world to experience dance as creators, performers, and spectators.

"Pulsing energy--tangible, but not quite visible--filled rooms of dancers from all comers of the earth. The level of concentration was similar to surgery. Contact and touch meant everything for there was no other means of communicating," wrote Josh Barnes, 25, about his experience at the conference.

Each day of workshops began with one gigantic warm-up session flu all conferees. Then children and adults split into separate programs, coming together for certain classes and performances designed for everyone. The children participated in service projects, including going into the Salvador favelas (slums) to meet local children, and working on choreography and costumes for the final conference performance.

"My contact improvisation class was full of Jamaicans, Brazilians, Africans, Europeans, and Americans--none of us spoke the same language," shared Kinnect member Emalia Tillotson, 20. "When we began doing exercises across the floor with partners, I remember thinking, 'Don't be silly, dance with someone who you don't know.' So I asked a Brazilian girl (age 15 to 16) to be my partner and she nodded yes.

Emalia continues "She spoke no English and I only knew one word in Portuguese, but we figured out what to do. One partner was to close her eyes and relax, the other to touch, and then squeeze different muscle groups that seemed to need attention. My partner was much less inhibited than me. I remember how she squeezed my face and chin really hard--funny thing was, it felt good. I laughed out loud--it was great to laugh freely.

"Then we stood back to back and moved to the music. We took turns leading the movement. We supported and lifted each other. We danced, learning more and more about each other, connecting clearly without speaking. I felt a joy I can't describe. For the first time in my life I fell absolutely no need for words or language." www.unix.oit.umass.edu/~devi/daci.