4-H Cultural Dance Club to perform at festival
From our weekly issue dated August 27, 2008
(From left) Frankie Purpuree, Caleb Brooks, Isabel Nelson, Ronnie Winder, Erika Anderson, Patrick Anderson. (Photo provided)
Hoping to begin a new tradition at the Labor Day Festival in Jubilee Park, Fiesta America’s 4-H Cultural Dance Club will march in the parade and perform several dances on Monday, Sept. 1.
This 4-H Dance Club was formed in March 2007 with only 13 participants. It has now grown to include 28 young people ranging from 5 to 19 years old. The students have this year focused on learning Latin American and Native American dances.
Costumes are handmade for each participant with their help and input. Although the classes are taught by Quita Flores at the OSU Extension Center on Ringuette Street in Grants Pass, it is open to all students of Josephine County.
Currently enrolled from Illinois Valley are Erika Anderson, 11, and Patrick Anderson, 10. Patrick says that he was not really interested in dancing when Erika started the class, but that they needed more boys and besides, “Grandma says she will buy me a ticket to Panama to see my other grandma, if I do really well with the dances.”
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The Fiesta America’s Dance Club has performed at the Spring Fair in Roseburg, annual Mother’s Day Pow-Wow in Grants Pass, for St. Anne’s Catholic Church and the Head Start Program, Boatnik Parade, Walk on the Rogue Event in Grants Pass, Josephine County Fair, and the Oregon State Fair.
Having just returned from the state fair this past week, the dance club is looking forward to adding the Labor Day Festival to its list of performances. A fund-raiser performance event is being planned for later this fall, when the club also will host other dance clubs for a night of fun entertainment.
The National 4-H Council mission is to advance the 4-H youth development movement to build a world in which youth and adults learn, grow and work together as catalysts for positive change. Fiesta America’s Dance Club is teaching our young people leadership, citizenship and life skills, while having fun dancing, and designing costumes and performing in public, one of the mothers said.
For additional information on Fiesta America’s and other Josephine County 4-H clubs, contact Tamara Preciado at the Josephine County Extension Office or via her cell phone at (541) 761-4093.
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