February 17, 2026Merly De La Hoz Cookson discovered her life’s passion in sixth grade when she and her classmates danced together in Santa Barbara Square in Santa Cruz de Mompós, a town in northern Colombia.
“We were doing a popurrí, which is like a big mixture of many songs that belong to our culture,” Cookson said. “That moment, that energy, the passion that everyone brought to La Plaza de Santa Barbara in Mompox just made me think that that is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.”
Seeing students, parents, grandparents and tourists gathered dancing together impacted Cookson, so much so that she welled up at the memory of it. That’s the community building she fosters through her Afro-Colombian dance class on Tuesday nights at the River Valley Dance Project in Deep River.
Traditional Colombian music and dance was a fundamental part of her upbringing, Cookson said, because of the lifestyle she experienced in her birth town.
“Mompós is a place in which every house has a musician,” Cookson said. “I come from a place in which culture [and] music is part of our daily life.”
Her parents would often host “tertulias musicales”, or musical social gatherings, in her home, Cookson said. Family friends would perform music that transported her across Colombia and across history with its European, indigenous and African influences.
“We would listen from our room, from la mecedora, from the rocking chair, all these beautiful musicians making music from the south of Colombia, from the center of Colombia. I'm talking about bambucos and pasillos and vallenatos,” Cookson said.
The cultural blend reflected her own ancestry. Cookson said her African and European roots come from her father’s side of the family while her indigenous roots come from her mother’s side.
Cookson said she likes to educate her students on those influences as she teaches the movements of Colombia’s dances.
Bringing Bullerengue and Bantu culture to life
In class, Cookson directed her students to place their hands on their hips, but instead of moving them side to side, she taught them to move their hips back and forth.
This is a key characteristic of Bullerengue, a traditional musical genre and dance from Colombia’s Caribbean coastline.
“Bullerengue is an initiation dance. It’s one of the rituals we dance in the north of Colombia and it has a great background of our African ancestors,” Cookson said. “[During Bullerengue], women get together to celebrate life, death and to celebrate a girl becoming a woman.”
The back-and-forth hips movement represents a woman experiencing period cramps, Cookson said. Women celebrating women through dance is a reflection of the African roots embedded in the dance, she said.
“African culture, it was more matriarchal,” Cookson said. “Many of our ancestors have roots in the Bantu culture, and they are the ones who bring Bullerengue to life in the north of Colombia.”
As an Afro-Latina, Cookson said she keeps those origins in mind when teaching others dances like Bullerengue.
“When colonization came to the Americas, it came through Cartagena, and with that, the slaves from Africa in that time,” she said. “Today we know they were more than slaves. They were taking princesses, the doctors and the leaders of the villages.”
The blend of various cultural influences is celebrated in Colombia, but Cookson said the history of a dance like Bullerengue is something that can’t be forgotten.
“I appreciate it today but I know that my ancestors had to go through a lot to leave us with these cultural experiences that we have, that we can celebrate today,” Cookson said.
‘Culture is movement’
For those of Afro-Latino background, Cookson said she doesn’t teach them dance moves, rather she is reminding them of what’s already inside.
“Our roots are within us, and we can live through them too,” Cookson said. “We exist with the knowledge of our ancestors already in our bodies and brains. They exist within us.”
!["Let's imagine we are five [years old] and turn around!" Merly De La Hoz Cookson encouraged her students to twirl in their skirts and let out their inner child, after they put their skirts on for the first time during the open house for her Afro-Colombian dance class at the River Valley Dance Project in Deep River, Connecticut on February 17, 2026.](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/7a4aeec/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3000x2000+0+0/resize/840x560!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F00%2Fba%2F9d3ee9d34a5eb917fefcf2bfe8e0%2F260217-afro-colombian-dance-open-house-ab23426xx.jpg)
When she teaches her students how to stomp their feet, bend their knees or roll their bodies, Cookson said that’s just her helping them reconnect with their heritage.
“I'm not showing you, I'm just reminding you. You are moving your feet like that because it's within you. You are moving your hips like that because it's within you,” Cookson said.
Dancing in that way is what keeps Afro-Colombian culture alive, Cookson said.
For those that aren’t of Afro-Latino or Latino heritage, Cookson said she welcomes any engagement that will encourage curiosity and further learning about her culture.
“Culture is movement. Culture moves. Bodies move, and if we allow the body to be, we exist within the culture,” Cookson said.
Engaging with her passion and promoting her culture are also ways to stay connected to her Afro-Latinidad, an identity that recognizes the African ancestry in her Latin American origins.
It’s an identity, she said, that connects her to Latinos of African descent all around the world.
“Afro-Latinidad means belonging,” Cookson said. “It means becoming. It means community.”
Learn more
The Afro-Colombian dance class with Cookson is held weekly on Tuesdays at 6 p.m. at the River Valley Dance Project in Deep River, Connecticut.
Students can pay per class as a walk-in or purchase bundles of up to 10 classes. No experience is needed, and skirts are provided. You can also follow Cookson on Instagram to find out more.
