The Deep Roots of Puerto Rican Culture Come to the Bayview Opera House

This weekend in San Francisco, the vibrant Enraizando dance production will give audiences a window into Puerto Rican history and culture.

During the performance, the rhythm of uptempo percussions will be intertwined with the footwork, fashion and flair of bomba dance. There’ll be singing and storytelling, as well as scenes from the island shown on a large screen while performers dance on stage, paying homage to their heritage and honoring their own maturation.

“Enraizando” translates to “rooting within.” This show, says producer and performer Shefali Shah, represents the journey of self-exploration.

For Shah, this process of using bomba to better understand her own roots started over 25 years ago. And now, through working with a group of young women, her endeavor has come full circle.

Shah grew up in Puerto Rico, the child of immigrants from India. While pursing higher education at UC Berkeley, she met Kahlil Jacobs-Fantauzzi, who was then leading the student organization Acción Boricua y Caribeña (Puerto Rican and Caribbean Action).

Through that collective, Shah developed a deeper relationship to Puerto Rico.

“We learned about these political prisoners,” she says, telling the story of the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional (Armed Forces of National Liberation), a Puerto Rican independence group known as FALN who had members incarcerated in the Federal Correctional Institute in Dublin on charges of weapons violations, theft, conspiracy and more.

The student group paid them visits, and simultaneously learned more about the social and political situation in the U.S. territory. “Through that process we also became more culturally aware and connected,” Shah reflects. “And my work here, to this day, has been rooted in this connection that I made with those women.”

The incarcerated FALN members were released after President Clinton granted them clemency in 1999.

One year prior to that, in 1998, Shah took her first bomba class. She was familiar with the dance from her childhood, but it was through that class that she became immersed the oldest Puerto Rican musical tradition — one that began as a way to combat enslavement and colonial oppression, and has grown to represent Puerto Rico’s ongoing culture of resilience.

Not long after taking that class, Shah began working with percussionist Héctor Lugo, another UC Berkeley connection. In 2002 Shah began teaching a class at Berkeley’s La Peña Cultural Center with Lugo, called the “Bay Area Bomba y Plena Workshop.”

In 2007 they tailored a class for children called Quenepas; some of those former students are now part of the Enraizando production. With the aim of creating a safe space for young women to discuss social issues and freely express themselves, Shah uses bomba as a teaching tool.

Not only does the dance — and its inherent storytelling — aid in the process of passing along cultural traditions, she says, it shows the young performers a way to grow from within. “They’re finding themselves through cultural and ancestral connections,” Shah explains.

“These young women have found a friendship that I’m hoping will last a lifetime,” Shah says, reflecting on all of the Saturdays the group has spent together over the past two years. “And now they’re going to share their part of what it means to transition into womanhood.”

The show, part of the larger 20th annual CubaCaribe festival, runs April 17 and 18 at the Bayview Opera House, and concludes on April 19 with a unique performance at Shah’s second home for the past 26 years, La Peña.

There, attendees will enjoy what Shah has coined as Bombatey, an event that showcases bomba dance and an Indigenous Taíno ceremonial circle, or a “Boricua batey,” she says.

Friday and Saturday’s shows at the Bayview Opera House will also feature the Aguacero ensemble, directed by Shah and led by Ayla Dávila and Héctor Lugo. They’ll be joined by multidisciplinary artist Maritxell Carrero and Dr. Jade Power-Sotomayor, director of the Chicanx Latinx Studies Program at UC San Diego. Bay Area-based percussionist and mentor Roman “Ito” Carrillo will perform, as will Puerto Rico-based MC and poet Yairamaren Roman Maldonado and Mari Luna, who is currently based in Boston, but started as a young musician working with Shah and Lugo as a part of the Quenepas group.

Videos and photos from Puerto Rico made by Berkeley filmmaker Eli Jacobs-Fantauzzi will be displayed on the walls of the Opera House, and Shah herself will also take to the stage. (“I’m going to sing,” she says. “I’m also going to dance and play minor percussion.”)

But the focus of the show is the young women.

During one of their dance pieces, the younger women will show that they’re “reflections of the older women that love them,” says Shah. She notes that there are multiple families who will be performing during the event. And that kinship, Shah adds, is shown through dance moves that illustrate how they are “sisters that walk with them in life.”

The performance also explores the difficulties that young women face in learning to leave and become independent. But by relying on “rooting” and the lessons learned from bomba, Shah says people grow to understand the profound interconnectivity of community and history.

“Even when we leave,” she says, quoting a poem from the young performers of the Enraizando production, “we’re never really alone.”

‘Enraizando’ takes place Friday, April 17 at 7 p.m. and Saturday, April 18 at 7 p.m. at the Bayview Opera House (4705 3rd St., San Francisco).

‘Bombatey’ takes place at Sunday, April 19 at 2:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center (3105 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley).