Connection Over Convenience: What Holds Us Together
Mambojaz performing at Lancaster’s annual One World Festival, a celebration of cultures.
Photo Courtesy of One World Festival
Being paired up with strangers for Bachata night wasn’t exactly on my parlay. But that’s how I was introduced to Mambojaz Studio through the imperfect, sweaty-handed, laughter-filled, and awkwardness of trying to dance with people I’d just met.
I thought it was just a chance encounter, but about a week later, I went to the “One World Festival,” and there was Mambojaz. Watching them dance felt like a spark I hadn’t felt in a while. There was something deeply moving about seeing a diverse group of people share the same stage that I was almost moved to tears. For a moment, it felt like something inside me opened, something communal.
Mambojaz is run by mother Jasmin and daughter Vianna Pantoja. Jasmin’s been dancing since she was nine, trained in many styles before finding her passion in Latin dance. After years of performing in New York and teaching others, she eventually passed that same passion on to Vianna.
After their performance, I told my roommates I was signing up for classes. I don’t think they believed me, or maybe I didn’t believe in myself. For a few days, I kept scrolling through their website, reading class descriptions and reviews, refreshing the page like it might magically pop up the words “DO IT!” in green and “Girl…DON’T DO IT!” in red. Until one night, I just did.
Very quickly, might I add, before I could get into my own head.
Before I knew it, I had been attending hip-hop classes for a few weeks that were anything but dull. The first thing I noticed was the sense of humanity: people show up as they are, no matter size, color, age, or dance background. On my first day, the instructor, Emily, offered me rides to and from classes and hugged me goodbye. Another time, she floated the idea that we all create a dance together. We didn’t actually do it that day, but the idea lingered: the energy of collaboration, of everyone contributing to something that doesn’t belong to just one person.
Jakyra and others practice a Hip-Hop dance routine choreographed by instructor Emily Abbruzzese.
Many people don’t know this, and to be fair, it’s not something I try to make known, but I started teaching myself to dance when I was about eleven. As I got older, I started taking classes, and always thought I’d keep that momentum going, but there weren’t many studios in my hometown, plus the business of everyday life. Over the years, my sister has often brought up the dances we used to make in the living room, wondering why I stopped dancing, pushing me to get back into it.
All of this is to say that hesitantly stepping into this space taught me things I didn’t expect. It has shown me, maybe even insisted, that we let go of more than we should. It is an idea I always wanted to live by, but the more I grew into myself, the more I avoided what now feels like an undeniable truth.
Take this as your sign to fall back in love with the things you once enjoyed. Tapping into the ways we saw the world when we were younger might help us navigate life, conflict, and community when things become complicated.
I also learned that community and friendship often begin with doing something that wasn’t part of the plan. One day after class, Emily brought cupcakes for everyone. When she realized one student could only eat gluten-free, she didn’t apologize and move on. She offered to drive her to a cupcake shop to make sure she got some as well.
There was no annoyance or sense of obligation. If anything, she was glad, like this was simply what you do when you care about others. It was a small act, but it stayed with me because I think community is built in the moments when you let yourself be interrupted.
And please give yourself grace. You know yourself and circle best, plus you can't show up properly if emotionally drained. But what if we always said no? What if we always chose convenience over connection? What if we always allow ourselves to remain isolated? I might have missed so much: the memories, the community, and the feeling of being part of something just a little bigger than myself.
I’ve been carrying that with me, especially as part of my internship with The Shalom Project. I am learning to recognize when care asks me to slow down, to adjust, and to choose presence, like the day I didn’t want to go snow tubing but went anyway. I ended up laughing more than I had in weeks.
Jakyra and some of her roomates enjoy hot chocolate after a fun day of snowtubing.
I keep thinking of a flower blooming deep in the chest and reaching outward. Maybe that image is personal, but offering car rides, showing how a dance is made in real time, cheering for someone still figuring out the steps, and more felt like the petals of something more.
I’ve always found something beautiful about being in a space and empathetically surrounding yourself with those who are different: some who know more, some who know less, but all willing to listen and move together. Otherwise, how do you learn? How do you grow? We need to be in community with each other. We need to move toward one another with grace, care, and the willingness to listen and act. We need to see each other.
In one of my favorite poems, “You Belong to the World,” Carrie Fountain writes:
“Even as
the great abstractions come to take you away,
the regrets, the distractions, you can at any second
come back to the world to which you belong,
the world you never left, won’t ever leave…”
Circumstances and situations may change, but the world and the people we share this community with are fundamentally the same. Sometimes we need to take ourselves out of those “abstractions” to remember that.
That said, I’ll keep taking classes at Mambojaz and get my foot in the door of other styles. Bachata keeps calling my name.
I’ll also search for other places where community gathers because I never stopped belonging here, and we cannot heal or become whole in isolation. Joy and togetherness will never stop. It just waits for us to take notice again.
National Momentum
For every local profile we offer, we want to tie the work to similar efforts happening across the country.
Photo Courtesy of Bryan Chris
In Elkhart, Indiana, Epic Dance Studio offers an entry point into community through movement. The studio welcomes dancers from early childhood through adulthood, including free classes for those with special needs and scholarships for students facing financial barriers. They also put on community performances.
Like Mambojaz, Epic Dance emphasizes presence over performance and offers similar programs. Its classes invite participants to show up as they are and move alongside others. At the heart of Epic Dance is a strong commitment to love, to dance, and to each other. Their approach shows how intentional spaces built with community in mind can create connection and care through dance.
