Spring is here, and it sounds like the Cueca!

This coming Monday is the 18^th of September, Chile’s Independence Day, and the country has been preparing since long before we ripped August from the calendar.  There are Chilean flags hanging on every building and being sold on every corner, and the windows of bakeries are plastered with hand-made signs reminding you to order you empanadas in advance.  In collegio, the students have been practicing the cueca, Chile’s national dance, during the periods normally reserved for both PE and music.

Today, my collegio hosted a Cueca competition that was attended by all the collegios in the EduCA network (there are currently eleven such collegios in Santiago).  Although the competition started early in the morning and lasted the entire day, classes continued as normal for the students who weren’t actively dancing.  As normal as you can get, at least, where there is Cueca music pulsing across the yard and pouring into the classrooms, so overwhelming that I found myself trying to explain grammar in tempo.  In sixth grade, Gonzalo slid the wide glass window back open no matter how many times I closed it, flooding the classroom with music while he leaned out to look at the dancers twirling their handkerchiefs under the wide white tent, spinning around and around each other but never quite making contact.

I can’t blame them for ignoring their workbooks, not when there was so much color outside.  Spring has come with September, with warm winds and a stronger sun, and I was almost hot when I stood on the edges of the tent during my break and watched the dancers.  The most fascinating part is the clothing; boys wear cowboy hats, flannel ponchos, and boots with gleaming, sharp-looking spurs while the girls wear bright-colored country dresses that are tied tightly at the waist by a white apron and then open out like bells into wide skirts.  No one dances without a white handkerchief. 

The older dancers I saw in the afternoon were beautiful, their steps precise, but my favorite to watch were the young dancers who had finished in the morning and spent the afternoon playing in their bright clothing, the boys kicking up dust with their jingling spurs and the girls running after them with their full skirts bouncing, their carefully twisted hair coming undone.  “Tia!” one of the boys yelled as he nearly ran into me, handing me a small branch of tiny white flowers, the kind that are blooming in the trees near the kindergarten classroom.  The flowers were slightly crushed, and a little dirty, and before I could thank him he had run off.  The bell rang, signaling the start of the next class, just as a new set of dancers took the floor and the music surged forward again.  I turned and went to class, where I knew the windows would be wide open.

                                         The giant Chilean flag outside La Moneda