The Latin-American and Caribbean club gathered on Britton Plaza to dance to traditional Latin music and invite passers-by to join in the Latin-American style dancing on Thursday, Nov. 10.

The informal gathering, which started at 7 p.m. and lasted for two hours, served as a preview to the main dance performance the club held the next day. The event, Noche de Baile, is the club’s annual Latin American dance party. It took place the night of Friday, Nov. 11 and continued through the following morning.

President of the Latin-American and Caribbean club Brussels Mercado ’19 says the event is highly anticipated each year. “Noche de Baile is really big,” says Mercado, “it’s been happening for years and is the one thing that everyone is always expecting from Latin American and Caribbean Club.”

Mercado says she had planned the introduction to Latin-American dances event on Britton Plaza as both a learning opportunity and a “teaser.” “…I just felt that it’s the night before [Noche de Baile] so [the Latin-American and Caribbean Club] thought that we’d offer a pre-dance space, and try to get the word out to everyone else, other than [with] a poster.”

Club member Briana Borough ’00 was excited to share her culture and promote Noche de Baile to everyone who walked past Britton that night. “Last year we had [Noche de Baile] but some people didn’t know what to do. So here, people have the opportunity to come and we can show them how to dance,” explained Borough.  “Some people feel like they can’t come if they’re not part of the culture because they don’t know what to do.” Borough expressed her hope that non-Latinos and Latinas would join in dancing because “Latin culture is very inclusive.  We just want to have fun.”

As the new president, Mercado has revived the Latin-American and Caribbean Club this year.  “[The club] was not active last year…so I just picked it up out of the blue and we’re just starting over.  We’ve had a couple of meetings and we spoke about what everyone wanted for the club, how everyone was feeling about Dickinson, and how we fit into Dickinson.”

The club is also involved in other getting involved in other aspects of campus life. Mercado said that the club gathered “in preparation for the election, so we watched a documentary on HBO called Habla y Vota (Speak and Vote) which was about the importance of going out and voting.”

Mercado has also worked to reinvigorate Noche de Baile with new ideas.  She said that “the club has a bad reputation of only catering to Spanish speaking countries and cultures of Latin America and the Caribbean, but I [want] to really incorporate the other cultures of Latin America that aren’t just Spanish speaking.”  In response, she decided to plan Noche de Baile as “Latin night, half Reggae.”  This year, she said, “The DJ is basically doing two separate nights that are done in a club and we’re going to put them together, blending in and out.”

Both evenings were co-sponsored by MOB and the Latin-American and Caribbean Club.  Borough mentioned that, “Mob is helping us, [The Latin-American and Caribbean Club] didn’t get a lot of funding so we’re just working together to do whatever we can.”