Dancing Saved My Life // 12.16.21
Episode description: When was the last time you felt the joy of movement?
Andreina Febres came to the United States at age 21, with one simple mission: learn English. She made a home and a family in the Bay Area — but it took a pandemic to push her to her life's true calling.
https://www.makingwavesstudios.com/
Show notes:
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Laura: When I was in college in the late 90’s, I found a way to time travel.
This was the era of Swing Kids and Swingers, where Vince Vaughn first snagged our hearts with that oddly irresistible laugh. It was the revival of the lindy hop and the jitterbug, of suspenders and wing-tipped shoes. I took the free dance lessons my college offered to get down the basic step-step-rock-step. I learned how to do the pretzel and to let my partner lead. I sang along as I danced when Big Bad Voo Doo Daddy’s big band played on Wisconsin’s Lake Mendota terrace. We were reaching back almost a hundred years in history to a dance step born in Harlem, and it was magical.
But most of all, I remember Wednesday nights on the west side, where for one night a week a family-owned Italian restaurant hosted a weekly swing dance. It was there that I learned tricks, dips, flips, and aerials, practicing first in the parking lot and then on the dance floor. It was there that I began to understand the silent language of my partner’s hand on mine, of being so in sync that we didn’t need words. My body felt strong and capable, my senses fully charged. We would dance for hours, stay ‘till closing, so drenched in sweat and giddy with energy that I’d be up half the night just feeling good, that swing beat still in my bones. It was living at its most exuberant, a feeling I’ve had only rarely since. Over twenty years later, those Wednesday nights of dancing are still some of the best moments of my life, when for a few hours, everything felt right.
Several years out of college I was still pining for those Wednesday nights.
When we moved to Oakland back in 2004, I tried unsuccessfully to convince my husband Nate to sign up for dance classes with me. Nate went to college a state away from me, and he too had been part of the swing dance revival.
But by then the world had moved on from swing dancing, and the only classes we could find were for salsa, meringue, samba, dances that required a different frequency than the one we’d been tuned to. I was game to learn, but Nate hemmed and hawed everytime I asked. In those days we lived in an apartment we could barely afford, with crumbling ceilings and walls we patched ourselves. I was working 5 a.m. shifts in a coffee shop and going to grad school full time while Nate was doing odd jobs for our landlord. He would end his days of bolting the foundation covered in dust, or scratched shoulder to elbow from pink foamy sheets of fiberglass. It was hard to get motivated to learn something new when so much of life was just learning to survive.
Every now and then we’d be at someone’s wedding and the DJ would put on You and Me and the Bottle Makes Three Tonight, that one swing song that would rustle up forgotten longings in those of us old enough to remember. Nate and I would dance, and it was fun, but our movements were always slightly out of sync. Life had made us more structured and less fluid. Our bodies had lost touch with the rhythm. And so over time I learned to let my dancing urges slowly fade, to find contentment in tamer passions.
That is until recently, when I met someone who understood.
Andreina: Hi, I'm Andrena Febres. I grew up in Caracas, Venezuela, and I grew up just moving my body. For me, culturally, playing music and moving is what you do. You go to a birthday party and you dance. Whether you are a 10, 15, or 16, you just dance. I remember as a kid, I was teaching people how to dance, never imagining that I would do that in the future.
Laura: Andreina is a fellow parent at our Spanish-immersion public school, and we became friends first through our sons, who met on the first day of school this year. I remember meeting Andreina years ago at Bailaton, our school’s annual fundraiser dance, but it wasn’t until school went online in 2020 that I realized that she was a dancer. Or let me rephrase that. At our school, almost everyone is a dancer. That Bailaton I mentioned is the best school dance I’ve ever attended, because from toddlers to teenagers to parents, people are actually dancing.
One of the great gifts of our community is that dancing has become synonymous for my kids, who have been immersed in dia de los muertos celebrations and ballet folklorico since they were toddlers. But Andreina’s tie to dancing isn’t just cultural. It’s the thing that has ultimately made her feel at home wherever she is.
Andreina: I came to the states in 1999 with one big plan, and it was to learn English. I was in the middle of finishing my business degree in Venezuela. My sister was in Berkeley. She was going to the Berkeley extension program, and the deal was for me to come for about six months, learn English, and then go back and finish my degree.
But after a couple of months in the Bay Area, there was no way I was going to go back. I fell in love with the community and the mix of races and languages and everything that was so new to me at the time when I was 21.
Right when I arrived, my sister said, “I'm going back to Venezuela and I have this apartment. You can take one more month here. And if you can find something for you to stay, great. And if not, I'll see you in Caracas.”
My English was really bad. I honestly could not have a conversation, but I was so committed that this is what I want to do. For the first three months I was in an English academy, just learning level one, creating sentences to speak. It was very basic. And I was so committed to learning that I was in class most of the day, but then I would finish and walk around listening to the radio stations and I could hear more voices. And then I went home and I would watch TV and have the captions on so I could get an idea of what they were talking about.
I started to look for opportunities to work—keeping in mind, I couldn't work officially because I was just a student visiting the country. So I became an au pair, and luckily I found a family who the mother was from Chile, so we could speak Spanish—but the kids didn't speak any Spanish. So I was immersed in a whole English world. The 14-year-old was too cool to have an au pair in the house, but the 6-year-old, we became bodies.
People thought that we were related because we both had curly hair. We were always together. We had, like, Friday dates where the parents would go out. The two of us we'll go out for dinner, go to the movies, play sports. I mean, we were very, very close.
I remember I would read books to him and he would look at me and say, “what was that?” And he’d look at the book, and he would laugh really hard because I could barely pronounce many things that we were reading about. He definitely has a lot of credit for my English at least for those first three years,
I think it helped a lot to live in somebody's house, because I was 21. You know, I left Venezuela, but I wasn't ready to live by myself. I was raised in a house with three sisters and I was young and very poor in many ways.
It was nice to be in somebody's house and do grocery shopping for them. I would get food ready, I would do laundry, like I exchanged my living expenses for work. And it was wonderful because being in the Bay Area, there was no way I was going to be able to afford rent and pay my expenses and go to school and all of that. So living in this amazing family's house was an answer for almost three years.
Laura: Andreina loved the family she worked for, but those first years were hard ones. More than twenty years later, it still brings up a mix of emotions to talk about.
Andreina:I would many times go to visit my family—even though I didn't have money, for real, like I remember sometimes I would laugh when I buy myself a coffee. And I remember associating how it related to my hourly pay, and it was harsh. But I knew I had to go back home to see my family. So luckily, I had a credit card. I'll charge my 800, a thousand dollar flight.
I think the memory of being so excited to have a new experience, and also so naive and young and clueless . . . I think it's a mix of many feelings. It’s the fear coming back. I was so lost. I mean, I remember going to the English classes one day. I was trying to head back and I got so lost. It took me forever. And I couldn't even ask questions. I could ask a question, but I could never understand when they responded.
I mean, think about somebody who's 21, and you would leave your house. And in the States, that's like, of course you leave your house. In Venezuela, you don't leave your house. You go from having some type of community and group of friends and you know, just knowing where you are at least. You start from zero. There is so much that we leave behind. It's family, it's community. It's just . . . there's no sadness right now, but I get emotional visiting those periods of your life that mark you in so many ways.
Laura: It was during those years of feeling lost and missing her family that Andreina found her way back to a part of herself that had always made her feel more connected to home. She went out dancing at any Latin club she could find, not taking classes but just dancing her way through this stage of life the way she had through every other one. After three years as an au pair, Andreina got a job in advertising, working as a media planner for the Latin American market. It was there that she became friends with Felice, who worked in the same office.
Andreina: And I saw her just moving pretty much dancing from one office to the other, and I asked her if she would recommend any place to learn to Samba, and she showed me and it looks so simple and you try. And I was like, “nope, it's not happening.” So she introduced me to ODC in San Francisco and I did this whole workshop, and I loved it, and I was there every week rehearsing.
Genetically, we have bunions, and I remember I went to get checked and the doctor said, “you need surgery, but you will be (out of) commission for many weeks, so you won't be able to dance.”
And I said, “I've got to wait.” Here I am getting ready for the San Francisco carnival, and then a few weeks before the carnival, my whole office went to the Civic Center in San Francisco to march to support immigrants. And as we were walking down the stairs at the Civic Center BART station, this lady fell down the escalator—like she was rolling, rolling down—and I was the last person at the bottom, and her head hit my foot that needed surgery. Luckily, my foot was there to protect her head. I think she got so scared, she got up and left. I’m sure she was very injured. And I was in so much pain, I couldn't walk. And I sat down and I asked for help, and I left that BART station in an ambulance.
That same week I went back to the doctor that I had seen and I said, “hey, I already got a broken bone, so why don't we break the other one and you just fix my bunion?”
Laura: For years Andreina had been taking care of herself, learning to be an adult in a new city, speaking a new language and adapting to a new culture. But suddenly she needed help with everything. So with no one else to turn to, she reached out to her mom, who was a travel agent in Venezuela.
Andreina: At the time she was a travel agent. So when I told her, Hey, I'm having surgery in two days.
And she said, okay, I, what time I'm coming? Like she would be driving for an hour. So she bought a ticket. She made it all work. She showed up, she came to the surgery with me and she took care of me for however days. I couldn't even get up from bed. And she was bathing me in my, like, I don't know I was 20, I don't know, probably 29, 28.
I didn't grow up very close to my mom. I mean, she was an amazing woman who stayed with us and work didn't work for many years and was all in for the four daughters. But our personalities just didn't click. You know, we just didn't get each other.
But when I moved to the states, it kind of created these, these standards that allow us to be who we were. And then we would see each other. It was this joy of being together for real this time.
So our relationship really changed. And he gave me this picture of, oh my God, this, this a mother. Like she. I gave it all up and said, I'm going to take care of my daughter, whatever she was doing in Venezuela was not as important anymore. So she was with me. I don't know if it was a lot. It felt like a long time.
And I remember I live in the tiniest studio apartment in the CD that you could ever imagine, which was half of my salary. Pre-tax, let's be clear. So I remember that tiny apartment that I share with her for so long. And I was like, oh, I need my own space at some point, but she was so sweet. And that, that on that trip, this is 2006.
Maybe I, I believe it's about around 2006 and she's asking me what type of exercises you should do for her belly. And when I'm showing her, she started to have these pains. And that's how we discover the first cancer she had. So obviously at the time we just thought, oh, there's some pain here. Well, she said, when I go back home, I'll check in with my doctor and then they found a tumor. She had colon cancer and that's how the cancer journey started for her.
Laura: While Andreina recovered from her surgery and returned to dancing, she watched her mom’s health steadily decline.
Andreina: And then she had surgery and then they always recommended at the time to have a little better of maybe chemo and a little bit of radiation to make sure that you were like cancer-free and that took about maybe a couple years. I'm not sure.
And then at some point the cancer came back in her lungs and that's when we all knew, okay, well, this is now we all fell. Like maybe these were getting closer to the end because when he comes back, we were a little more hesitant and it was so soon. So. I think when she was diagnosed a second time, if I recall correctly, the, at some point, all of the four of us, the four daughters were with her in Caracas and we were exploring options in where she could do for treatment or not.
And we saw very different scenarios of people who are totally against chemotherapy and people who are pro chemo. And everybody who we talk to in general say that my mom could have about two and a half years of life left. Surprisingly enough. They don't tell that to the patient. They just tell us that she had two and a half years.
So my mom, I don't think she knew, or if she knew, she pretend that she didn't know or, or chose to ignore that. So she, she always lived like I'm here and never, never talked about death. She would never say anything about. Body or if she wanted to be cremated or not like that, we couldn't get any words around death with her.
I don't know if she purposely avoided it or she always felt like if I don't talk about death, then I, maybe I won't die. You know, I don't know what it was, but I think, I think deep down, she thought that she was going to get cure. And at some point she was having treatment every two weeks.
Laura: Meanwhile back in California, Andreina had continued to dance, and in that process had gotten to know not just her officemate Felice, but Felice’s twin brother Rafael. While Andreina’s mom was going through chemo, Andreina and Rafael were planning a wedding. Even though Andreina’s mom was still regularly traveling and visiting them between treatments, they decided to get married in Venezuela so the family could gather around her.
Andreina: This is now somebody who is a cancer patient chemotherapy every two weeks. So she would come right after chemo. And then right when she would go back, she will have her say her next session. So it was pretty rough life for a few years, I think at least two, four years.
Laura: While Andreina and Rafael were planning a life together, Andreina’s mom was slowly losing hers.
Andreina: I remember her in September of 2008, right before our wedding in Venezuela, she asked, I think I'm done. I would like to stop my treatment. And I was with her at the beach and I said, Hey, I support you a hundred percent, but why don't we wait until the wedding? Because she had so much pain in between treatments that I knew she couldn't, well, I was afraid she would die before the wedding. And two, she would have so much pain that the tumor was just like taking over her body and, you know, it was physical pain at the time.
So she agreed to continue and she attended the wedding, which was beautiful. And I think that was like the best memories she had before she left, because all of us were together, all the four sisters and the husbands and the children that were born. And we were at the beach and we were there for a week all together. It was so sweet and it was hard to get everybody there, but it's so worth it that I don't think her, her mind was there anymore. I felt like it was his body attending, but I think that the treatment heart just killing her. And then I was like, she wasn't, I couldn't look at her in the eyes and feel like, oh, this is my mother.
It was very so real. It's a very, it's almost like a photo of somebody that is still there with you.
Laura: The family gathered in Venezuela and the wedding was beautiful, but even as they were celebrating, they were anticipating the grief they all knew was coming. A couple of months later, Andreina’s mom passed away.
Andreina: When she died, which happened right after my wedding a couple of months after the wedding, and that really proves that she was waiting for her daughters to get kind of settled, like somebody else is taking care of them probably. And for a whole year, I think I saw the price. Like I couldn't, I think getting up from bed was a big challenge for sure. And I think the way I look at it, looking back, my three sisters have kids at the time, so there were sad for sure, but they had so much going on and they had to be mothers that I don't think that I think our experience was different at the time, because I was with my husband alone, we were trying to get pregnant and I couldn't, and he just felt like, oh my God, I, I don't, I don't have any reason to move.
Laura: Dancing had helped Andreina feel at home in the States when she was feeling lost and alone. It had given her a community that made her feel more connected, that had even brought her to her husband. In the wake of her mom’s death, she didn’t feel like dancing.
Rafael’s sister Felice suggested that they get their samba certification together. Dancing had helped her through other hard times. Maybe it would be the thing she needed now to allow herself to revive even as she grieved. Andreina didn’t feel like dancing, but she said yes anyway.
Andreain: Right after my mom died, I decided with my sister-in-law to get that Samba certification, it only took a day. And I was like, why not?
There were moments where I. Verbally said, I'm going to do it for you. Like, I, I would go and teach the class or work connect choreography or do something just like, I'm gonna do this for your mom. But it was a hard, super hard year.
And I kept telling my husband, you're an angel. Like, you can keep up with ACE. I promise we're coming out of this at some point.
Laura: She kept dancing through painful anniversaries and holidays that used to include her mom. And then one day she reached another landmark that she always thought she’d get to share with her mom. She took a pregnancy test and it came back positive.
So I went to get my certification when I was like eight, six weeks pregnant or so, and after that, I started to teach right away and that helped me.
Laura: Christmas came and the family gathered together once again this time in San Francisco. Everyone was eager to celebrate this new life even as they mourned the one they’d lost. But instead, that family reunion became another layer of grief for Andreina.
Andreina: We had a family reunion that Christmas, when I got the news that the pregnancy was not a pregnancy. The doctor's like, no, I'm sorry. Everything looks like you are. And you have a whole sack and your blood tests as you're pregnant, but there's no baby.
And my whole family was in town and we were taking my mom's ashes all together to the CD because my mom's favorite city was San Francisco. She went everywhere and she always said there was nothing like San Francisco. So we took her ashes and it was a sweet reunion, but I was in so much pain. And I remember after the doctor's appointment, my family's like, “tell us, we want to know, how was the ultrasound?” It's like, I don't want to talk to anybody. I'm sorry.
Laura: Through all of that loss, Andreina kept dancing, teaching others how to move their bodies and come alive as if her own life depended on it.
Andreina: I started to teach right away and I truly believe that dancing got me out of that place.
I took it very serious to just dance and dance and dance.
It broadened me this excitement to just get first, to listen to music, just changes my mood for sure. And it gives me a reason to move the body.
Laura: Slowly, dancing brought Andreina back to life. But we never truly move on from the people and places we love. Even as we find reasons to live beyond them, a part of us always carries them with us. For Andreina, this wasn’t just true of her mother, but of her country. When Andreina left Venezuela at 21, it was already beginning to change. But by the time she and Rafael got married there, the country was no longer one she could easily return to.
Andreina: I think sometimes your instinct without not knowing much tells you that something is needed.
My wedding was in Venezuela in 2008. We flew to margarita island, and I remember the fear of being on the shuttle from the airport to the hotel. And I could see how nervous the driver was because we got to a section where there was these street blocked and there was fire in the center, in the middle of the. And what they, they were some local elections and we weren't sure if the government had one probably will be more peaceful, but if their opposition to the government one, then anything could happen.
Laura: When Andreina left Venezuela back in 1999, Hugo Chavez had just come into power.
Andreina: I think at the beginning it looked really positive. We were still in a good place. Things seem to work as they did before. I think there were many actions that seemed really good, like they were helping people that were poor. They were creating programs to support people who didn't have the right income or the right house situation. It felt positive for the first, I don't know, six, seven, I don't know how many years.
But then some things started to happen. Like if you had a second property and you would be there only on the weekends, because it was your like beach apartment or anything like that, then people started to say, or to. No say, but it was really happening that your apartment will be invaded and then the government will take it and give it to a family need.
I remember there were videos where Chavez will be televised and he will point to that building and say, what's in there. Well, there was , you know, this is a business where they do, you don't know photocopies and they do okay. Take it. So they were just without hesitation, just take property, like it was a monopoly game.
So I think that's when people started to get very scared. And then when he got really, really ugly was the moment when people started to go to the street. In a peaceful way, say, Hey, we don't support you.
Or there were elections. And then it always showed like the opposition was winning, but the government always won at the end. So, you know, it felt like the process wasn’t clear, or there was a lot of corruption. So when people went to the streets, they were beating them up and killing them and he was that's when you realize, okay, well, this is a dictatorship now.
I had a friend who left the country because she was threatened. She was on TV speaking up and they threatened her and she left the country with her husband and the two kids. So I think, at least for us being like middle class, it got scary and people, you know, you go to the street and you protest and you think you're doing something good. And then you see the violence against you. And I watch videos that I eat called me so depressed that I thought I need to stop. I, I can help. I'm not there. All I can do is support my family. I can ask people if I can send them something, I can send money or food, but watching these videos that they just, they go to your bones. These were videos of real life that there was a woman like beating another lady on the head with a help. I mean, he was horrible, so graphic. And so inhuman that that's when I started to feel hesitant about going back or visiting even going for.
Laura: One by one, Andreian’s family began leaving Venezuela. Andreina visited Venezuela less and less, no longer feeling safe to come and go.
Andreina: All my sisters left. I was the one to be out of the country the longest, that's decided after Chavez won, that I was going west, going to stay. Then another sister moved with her husband to the states as well. And then the sister who brought me to California moved at some point with her husband and their three children to Germany. And the last one we were begging her, just go, please, because we could hear stories that were hard to believe, and they were getting closer and closer to us in terms of, you know, my uncle G getting kidnapped friends, being robbed, and, you know, God's pointing to their heads, things that were just so scary that. We kept telling my sister, please just go before something happens.
My dad was living in Venezuela all this time until about three years ago, he moved to the states. I still have, you know, costumes, friends, uncles.
Laura: Andreina watched while her family scattered all over the globe and the place where she’d first associated dancing with home became a home she could no longer return to. Through all of it, she kept dancing, once again finding in dancing the connection she was missing in the rest of her life.
Andreain: And then the dance brought me to this community in Oakland, and I met amazing people and how I think the journey really got brighter and more beautiful was when you teach, you see so many people and meet so many amazing souls that when I was dancing one day, I saw these person and I knew she was in chemotherapy after seeing my mom going through it.
Laura: Andreina always loved getting to know the women in her classes, but there was one woman in particular that she noticed week after week, because she made her think of her mom.
Andreina couldn’t bring her mom back, but she could use the experience of losing her to help Joy. She understood what it was like to dance even when everything inside you felt like it was dying, when hope was hard to conjure up. She wanted to do more than just dance with Joy. She wanted to make her days worth living, so she asked Joy what she could do to help.
And I don't think we knew each other at the time, but I approached her and I said, Hey, how you doing? You know, and I, I will always try to go person by person in general, before or after class. And she told me she was in chemo and then we ended up exchanging numbers and I took her to a doctor's appointment. And I remember saying to her something around, Hey there's all these events that people do to raise money, to support the cancer society, or is there anything you would recommend me to do? We can do an event. We can raise money together. And she said, please just don't give the money to research. Just let's help people who are dealing with cancer now because we don't have a lot of resources.
So Joy and I talked and she verbally said, I wish I could find a t-shirt that says Dancing Saved my life because I plan my chemotherapy around class so I can feel healthy enough to come and walk in from my house and dance.
And I thought, okay, all this is powerful. And obviously we couldn't find that t-shirt, but we made it. And that's how Dancing Saved My Life Nonprofit started.
Laura: It turned out that Joy wasn’t the only one who felt like dancing had saved her life. They made T-shirts, and sold hundreds of them.
Joy finished her chemo and kept dancing. Little by little, she got stronger, and then another year came around. They made more shirts, each time selling hundreds of them and donating the money they made to support people who were living with cancer. They’re still printing them today, and Joy is still around to see those efforts support women like her, who may or may not live to see the next year, but at least they’re experiencing some care and comfort while they are still alive.
Then we decided to make the t-shirts and back in 2014, we said, well, let's make the t-shirts. And we sold hundreds of them. And then every dollar that we would make would go to this pile that ended up sponsoring women with cancer to go into a three day wellness retreat in Bolinas.
And it was a retreat created just for them. It was led by Maura singer who was already enjoys life. She was somebody who helps she has many programs and many ways to help people who are. In different times of their life. People with cancer, people who had lost family members and she herself lost her sister when she was really young.
And I think she feels like there is a mission in her life to be what she's doing right now. So the retreats became this powerful reason for our community to get together, to raise money. It was not only the t-shirts. Then he became silent auctions. He became dancing that am reveal based street in October.
And the mall will give me the space and promotion and create flyers and banners and all of these to raise money. So. An idea that, you know, it's not, I didn't have a plan. I just, I got the experience of having a mother dealing with cancer and then having a student dealing with cancer, that there is no coincidence that you are presented these people in your life to do something meaningful.
So it was a sweet time to every year, come up with what are we doing now to raise money? So every year we printed a new t-shirt. So it became a collection which has been beautiful because people now have t-shirts from 2014 until 2019. And I'm about to release the 20, 20 and 2021, a little bit late for obvious reasons.
But they're coming, they are in the oven at this moment. So that's how dancing saved my life. Y the story now it's deep. It's amazing.
She's around. And I see her often and she's full of life and I'm sure she's going to live for many, many years. And you know, there was a reason we met and it's, it's been a beautiful journey with that.
And I think I love, she always says, oh, you're so good at creating community. And I don't know if it was that thirst from talking from the beginning, like you leave your house and then you're like, oh, I need people, you know, I need to feel at home.
Dancing saved my life has been like our baby, like with joy and with Mora, we've done a lot with ed and we've been on TV and radio and everywhere we can talking about it.
But I think that community, that home, that I was talking about a community that I feel so much in the right place comes from that effort. And all of these are mainly people who dance with me.
Laura: Meanwhile there were other babies, too. Andreina got pregnant again, and this time the pregnancy went as planned. She had a son, and then got pregnant with another.
Her youngest son Carlos is my son’s most beloved friend, and most Fridays Carlos and Javi are at our house playing with our kids, jumping on the trampoline or reading books or—sometimes—dancing.
But in between Dancing Saved My Life and the friendships between our families today, there was another baby, one that like this podcast, was born because of the pandemic.
Going into the pandemic, Andreina’s business was thriving. People were signing up for her classes in large numbers, and it seemed like things would only get better. And then in March of 2020, she got the news that she’d need to make some drastic changes.
So in March, Of 2020 when I'm teaching my son, the class, which was the biggest class I've had in my life, I was told we can only admit 30 people to they in person because people need to be six feet apart.
And I was like, oh, okay, sure. I, I didn't know how serious this was going to be. And I reached out to my friend, Adriana, who also taught at the same location with me and I asked her, can you help me? Can you just help me stream my class so that people can take it online so that the ones that can not be in person can at least dance.
We honestly thought this was a solution for the month. So I taught that Sunday, which I believe was March 15th. And I taught in a studio, no mask at the time about 25 to 30 people computer in front of. Not having any idea of what we were doing, but people were, you know, grateful that they could continue to dance regardless.
And then the next Tuesday I had to teach again and the studio was already closed and we said, okay, well, let's do what we gotta do. And I don't know if we were teaching, we try Facebook live, we try different platforms. And then we ended up using sume, which ended up being the best friend for everybody for a long time.
So between other Deanna and me, we were supporting each other. So I would help her with her classes and she will help me with mine. Then we learn, I mean, the learning curve was a steep, as you can imagine from how to share the music and add in lights and ring lights and. She was my DJ. I was her DJ making us believe that the music will be more in sync for the participants.
Laura: They learned and adapted their classes fast because they had to. Sometimes it was magical. Other days, the technology didn’t cooperate and it was a disaster. But through it all, they kept dancing. Andreina found in Adriana a friend who could embrace both the changes and the challenges of launching a new business in the pandemic, who could see each turbulent moment or emotional hurricane life threw at them not as something to battle, but a wave to ride.
It was out of that sense of collaboration and adaptation and willingness to grow that they decided to officially become business partners and launch Making Waves.
Making Waves Studios was born on March 15, 2020, when Andreina & Adriana came together to Live stream their Zumba class to keep their community dancing and connected. Their daily classes created a bigger community with people from all around the world.
Making Waves Studios has donated over $27,000 since March 2020 and continues to donate 5% of all of their sales in the hope to create the change they wish to see in the world.
Join a class and let’s Make Waves together!
On their website, it says,
Community, spreading joy & giving back is what motivates us.
Our goal is to make each class the highlight of your day!
And then bandwidth. I didn't know what even bandwidth was. Then upgrading our internet, asking everybody to be off turning the devices on airplane mode. I mean, you name it. Like we try it all. And there were moments where things were so good. And we were asking people for donations to take the classes. And I think the fear and the not knowing what was coming, people were so generous.
I am no kidding. When I say a sauna class, I could get a little bit like more than a thousand dollars for a class. And that's when we said, okay, what are we doing with this money? This is not our money. We will get paid. Well, we will get paid in the past and that's what I felt it was fair. But then I have all these remaining that wasn't my money.
It was, it was the universe money that wasn't for me and other Deanna and I were very, we were both so aligned saying, okay, let's start donating. And we started donating to the studio that we were working for because we knew their doors were closed. They had to pay rent. And we donated to them almost $2,000 in a few weeks.
And then we w we said, okay, what's next we'll dance. And say, my life, it's a nonprofit. We're supporting women with cancer. We donate it again, like 2000 more. So we were going to more and more organizations. And then obviously these, these generosity got to a point where things started to get a little bit thinner than we, a lot of people would show up.
Give a donation at all. And then we were starting to see, you know, we had a hundred people in our class, but maybe 30 people will donate. So that's when we thought let's make this more serious. Let's turn these into an official business. And then we brainstorm with our husbands and everybody had a piece.
Everybody had something to say, and we all together agree that making wave studios was the baby that we were all going to have together. And that's what it's been. It's, it's been an effort of two families. husband being the best it person I've ever met, who explains things to you in a way that you actually understand.
And he comes and he fixes and he puts an ads and hardware. I mean, he hard wire my whole house to make sure that you didn't matter where I was. I was going to have the best connection. At least if the, my provider was giving me the best connection for the internet. So we, we gave birth to these baby, and now we always joke believe it or not.
I always tell Arianna that we should have a baby, but as a group in which you share the baby, and I said, I'm not the leader of that another child, and she wasn't ready. And now we joke that that's the baby we wanted to have. So making wave studio cities, and we have, since March, we, we go back to March of 2020, because even though the name wasn't there.
The partnership was there. The commitment was there. We showed up every day. It didn't matter if we had cried in the bathroom for 25 minutes that day, but we weren't showing up to class. And if she had issues, we will be, both of us will be in class if it was her class and she had issues with the internet or something happened, I will take over and vice versa.
So it was the most beautiful partnership of, we wanted to make sure that we were there for the. And then everybody verbally said, I need this. Like, this is keeping me sane. I can believe I can always come back and dance with you. And so we offer dance, we offer yoga, we offer meditation. So we've been adding pieces to help all us, not only as owners of the business to be sane because all of these are practices.
We do, we are not just offering it to everybody else. I'm meditating every day because of making waves and we've been working together and the donations continue, not at the same pace because now people pay per class and we'd donate at least 5% of our sales. Then we also do events and donate beer amounts of money.
With just donated $1,500 to the Alameda county community food bank in November, knowing that this is one of the most critical times of the year. And when we look at it and say, wow, this is 3000 meals. We're feeding potentially 3000 people with this effort. And this is a community. This is not me. This is not Ariana.
This is not Valentino. Natalia. Whoever's teaching the class. This is all of us as a community. And that to me is the best and the biggest gift of being in the states and feeling like, oh, we can do something bigger together and we can be part of something bigger.
Laura: I asked Andreina if she thought this life would have ever happened for her if Venezuela, if she could imagine any of this if she’d stayed, or if she thinks she’ll ever return.
The last time I went to Venezuela was probably when I was pregnant in 2012. And I went with my oldest son who was about one and a half with Javier, and then I was pregnant with Carlos Alfredo. So yeah, that's 2012.
I don't know if I have that awareness in Venezuela. I would imagine. Been there. I would stay just with the suffering of my mom's cancer. And I dunno if I had, if I would have had the ability to grow out of that pain and turn it into a beautiful lesson to bring something back to the world. I don't know if that's something it's like those movies that take you back and forth between if you take in this path or this other, I don't know.
I, part of me believes that I doubt it. And I think with all the weaknesses and floss of the United States, I do feel at least in the bay area that I have these vision that a lot can be done and we can accomplish it and we can talk to others and convince them that if it's something powerful that it's going to help somebody else, you're going to get support.
And I've seen it with men. Many things I've, I've done in my last 22 years of my life.
I have looking at the hope, I think with technology, even though sometimes. It will be great not to have it every day. I think that connection with people around the world without the limitation of the distance is what gets me real excited that I, I can continue to do what I love, but I'm able to share it with people in a Europe without being in the same room.
So I just hope that these effort continues to grow and we're able to get this community bigger for the sake of just not only moving our bodies together for feeling like you're a part of something and where we see you, like when you're showing up, you, we know you're there. You're not you're, you're never ignored or not celebrated for who you are.
It's just, I want to bring. Gift that I do believe we have and with my Latina humility. Cause I think it's really hard for most of Latin people to be too brave. A little bit brave is the word when you brag, it's the word like, I think it's really hard for at least in my opinion, for Latinos to brag. I would say that the gift that we can bring is that awareness of, I see you and I, I celebrate who you are and I want you to be part of this because we are making waves together.
We're helping people, we're supporting organizations and groups of people that we have never even know existed. And our own community is suggesting organizations that we should support. And anytime there is a natural disaster. Then we take a break and we pause and we said, okay, it's time to support these fires.
Oh, now it's time to support the tower. You know, things that have happened in my army in California, it's been wonderful to have the resources to say, oh, maybe $10. Doesn't feel like a lot, but now we're going to donate 350 together. So the hope is that we can continue to do these together and grow it even bigger.
I love to invite people specially when they feel that there's no way I can do that because he gives me almost like more, more to work with. It gives me that excitement of like, oh no, I'm going to show you because the whole idea, I mean, Samba, ideally of when you think about Samba, it's, it's a dance for everybody.
It might not be the case for all the instructors, but in my opinion, we're trying to make something accessible and E any class, it may be hard to be accessible the first day, whether you know how to dance or not, because you're just following somebody for the first time. But I always tell people three times a day, Do it three times.
And then, then you tell them, unless you really, really hate it. And you're like, Nope, I'm not coming back then. You know, I wish you the best and I'm glad you tried it. But three times to do something that could be new and it could be a yoga class, it could be a meditation. It could be something you've never done.
But to give it a try, because the, the joy of moving the body, the joy of maybe not using your brain in front of a computer to do an Excel sheet, or to respond to an email using the brain to find coordination. I have people who have different health situations and they say, oh, dancing has helped me so much for my stability or his mood or his depression.
whether it's my class or somebody else's class, you try just to get out there and listen to that music and move.
And without any judgment of I'm just here to move. It doesn't matter if it looks right, it needs to feel good. And that's my latest sentence. And my motivation is if he feels good is right, do now worry about what it looks like.
And we all look different for a very specific reason. We all are different. So your hips, my hips, your shoulders, they all need to look different. And that's beautiful. So that's the invitation is there. Just come try, give it a shot, move close your eyes laugh, but no judgment. You can, the moment you start telling yourself something that is negative.
That's when you take a moment, you stop, you take a deep breath, put that thought in a drawer. Hopefully never opened the drawer again and come back to it and just move like nobody's, nobody's watching. Okay. There's a lot more that I have to say about
but I've been thinking so much about all of this and no, it's, it's beautiful and I love it and I feel like I need more than three times to get it. And that's okay. 6, 10, 15. I mean, for me, somebo was a perfect example. It took me so long and I practice, I was committed. I wanted to perform and I, I stood in front of, I didn't have a mirror, so I stood in front of a window.
And with my reflection, I could see a little bit what I was doing and I practice and practice. I'm not the best, but I, I, I get, I have fundings since, so that's what matters.
I think I would add that being home for a year and a half. Like we all were, or most of us, depending on where you are located, but at least in the bay area for March of 2020 until pretty much like August of 2021, I think being at home and having the kids watch the whole process of these, having their own experience for seeing us continue and come up with ideas and show up and talk to people and help and donate, like I think.
That was also a beautiful gift of something. They go to witness that they wouldn't, they wouldn't have seen it if we were not in shelter in place. If the kids were not at home watching every step we took, which I'm not saying was wonderful, or he was nice or easy, but
they got to see the sweat and the tears of learning and trying to do the best we could.
And they're part of it. Like they wear our making waves shirts with so much pride and is sweet to have them be part of this baby that we all have together. And they, they show up to some of the classes and they are in some of the recordings because they show up to the class and they want to be part of it.
So we do try to keep it very. Down to earth and real like, yeah, this is my child. And he's coming to class late to say hello, because it is as professionals. We want to make it, we make the sound and the lighting as professional, but we are also human beings that are hosting classes in our houses and have dogs and have internet problems and all of that.
So we are trying to embrace the reality and the circumstances and do the best we can with that. I love that. And I'm realizing something that we didn't talk about, but if you want to you know, I mean, you mentioned struggling getting pregnant for a while there and you have two boys now. So like, I dunno.
So we were trying to get pregnant for a while.
I think our first wedding was in 2007 and Javier was born in 2011 and here is a couple in their thirties just trying to have a baby. And I think the way I remember I was working a lot. It was a really fun job, but he kept growing in terms of responsibilities and it was in a media, a Hispanic media agency, and I felt so much stress.
And I had a situation that made me decide to quit the job and write a S them following month after I quit, I was able to get pregnant. So I'm not saying out, they're like, go on, quit your job so you can get pregnant. But it happened like the level of stress I had was real. So we finally were pregnant and.
That was about may. And then Javier was born in March of 2011 and I danced the whole pregnancy until he was about maybe, maybe until eight months of the pregnancy. I stopped teaching at that time. I kept moving and exercising, but I stopped teaching because the belly was heavy and I couldn't move as fast.
And I actually had people in the front that will demonstrate some of the moves that I couldn't do anymore because the Bailey was in the way. So it was a beautiful sight. And I remember a lot of people were nervous to see me dancing with a big badly. I hid that brain and for a long time, There's always experience at the beginning when you announced you're pregnant and then you actually had to tell people, well, actually I'm not.
So when I, it was confirmed that I was pregnant. I didn't tell anybody any of my students until I was like five months pregnant. So I will wear t-shirts and you look like I had just gained weight and people didn't know. And I would look at people and they look at the Bailey and they would talk to each other.
So they knew something was on, but nobody had the guts to ask me. So I, I ended up having a C-section that wasn't planned, but I think six weeks after I started teaching again, the doctor was like, wait, wait. And then I came back teaching right away. And Javier was in classes all the time. And I had another sister-in-law that would come to class and would keep an eye on him if he needed something.
And then when Javier was one year. We got pregnant with Carlos and same thing. I kept dancing. I mean, Michael took teaching and dancing is so real that when Javier was a baby, we were living in Marine. I was teaching a lot of classes in Marine, but I was commuting to Oakland to teach my regular class of flying studios.
And I kept showing up. And even I was teaching a class at club one at the time, and I remember he would cry for 45 minutes in the backseat. And here I am going to teach a class and I will show up sometimes with the baby and the daycare of the gym was closed. And I remember teaching with him in my arms and a Bailey.
I mean, you, you know, you do it all and they, they are both, they both love dancing. They both love music. Yeah, I mean that, it makes me so happy. To play music in the car and see them, see them, not only singing products, really moving their bodies. And I'm like, yes, they are my children. Yes, dancers here. I'm there. I record some videos and I share them in social media. And I know I probably need to ask their permission by now, but it's so tempting because I think it's so important for us to show the next generation that they need to move. It's okay. They, you, we shouldn't be judging our bodies or telling us he doesn't look good.
Or why are you dancing? You have to live feed, whatever you are telling yourself. Stop, move your body and show the children in your family, your nephews and nieces and grandchildren. Then we can all dance together. It's okay. We don't have to be the best at it. We just want to move. Yeah. I love that. You said that because I.
Yeah. And I've, I honestly, when I see the little squares on swarm and when I see the people who are showing up in person that there's something so special and magical about everybody's hips and I'm always telling people.
Wow, your hips are perfect. They're amazing because it is, it is to me like the most first we hold so much energy and feelings in our hips that when we move, not only we release that, but it is a beautiful sight and it's so powerful and we get stronger. Ah, I've I can go on and on talking about hips and movement, it's like, I'm so glad I found these place that I found that teaching a dance class can be part of my life.
I don't. And again, going back to how I grew up, I don't think that was an option. I don't think I studied photography as well. And I remember when I told my. Yeah, well, I have a business degree, but I'm a professional photographer and I'm teaching dance. It's like, yeah, but you have a business degree. So you have to have some type of degree to make it feel in Venezuela.
Like, well, you belong here. Like you, you achieve something. But I think that dancing is such a strong career for me in a way. I mean, I, I just see it as a way to get together with people. It's I don't feel like it's my job, but it's an excuse to get, to see wonderful people every week and connect with them in a very deep, in a much deeper way that I would, if I were just having coffee with them.
Laura: A couple of months ago, Andreina invited me to come to one of her classes with Making Waves.
The first class I came to was held on the roof of a parking garage where we danced on turf under a pink sky. I almost didn’t come because I’d had the kind of day of work that made me want to curl up into a ball and cry. But instead I let Andreina teach me how to dance, how to move my body no matter how I was feeling.
As a lifelong distance runner who has been trained to move in straight planes, I felt like my hips had been trained out of swiveling the way Andreina’s do. Maybe they never moved the way hers did.
There was a time when I could say that I was genuinely good at swing dancing. I learned all the steps and the tricks and I was fit and coordinated and young enough that I learned fast how to do it well.
That is not what happens when I dance with Making Waves. I feel distinctly uncoordinated, out of practice at every part of what I’m doing. I feel like a beginner, not sure if I should focus on the footwork first or move my arms.
But from the first class, I realized that none of that mattered. No one else cared whether or not I was any good at this. I wasn’t actually doing it to be good, though I wouldn’t mind getting better. I was doing it purely for the joy of it, because it was fun to move my body and sweat and attempt to shake my hips the way Andreina’s do. I could feel the total lack of judgment from the women around me. No one was laughing at me when I got behind, or rolling their eyes when I didn’t get the steps right. It wasn’t just fun to be there and move my body that way, it was healing. It didn’t change the fact that I still had a hard week ahead of me, or that so many things in my life or in this world are not the way we wish they were.
But as I danced, something incredible happened. I found that it didn’t actually matter if I was good at dancing. I was in a place where for once my worth didn’t depend on how I performed. Everyone there was doing exactly what I was, just trying to move our bodies to work out all of that stress and sadness and joy and exhaustion and everything else this pandemic season has thrown at us. We were dancing like our lives depended on it, dancing like it could save us.
And you know what? It was the highlight of my day. Not because I was good at it, but because it helped me come alive.
Whether you are a lifelong dancer like Andreina or have never danced a step in your life, I hope you’ll come dance with us. One of the best thing that has happened to me in this long and difficult year is meeting Andreina, and forming a partnerships between our pandemic-born businesses.
We know that this year has been hard on a lot of you, that you might need something to change things up, or some encouragement to get out of your usual rhythm. So we’re doing our best to help you find some joy in the way that suits you best. Now through January 15, we’re challenging each of you to join us in making some waves, helping both of our communities grow and finding each other.
If you’re new to Making Waves, give it a try and let us know what you think. If this is your first time listening to Shelter in Place, we hope you’ll join us for more season 3 episodes to reimagine life through creativity in community.
Check out our show notes for today or either of our websites to learn how you can enter our Making Waves Shelter in Place raffle by subscribing to to Shelter in Place on any podcast app, taking a screenshot of the episode you’re listening to, and following and tagging us on Instagram at the handles @shelterinplacepodcast.org and @makingwavesstudios. We’ll pick three lucky winners to
In a few weeks we’ll be sharing another Making Waves story from Andreina’s business partner Adriana. In the meantime, I hope you’ll join us as we dance together. You’ll see Andreina or Adriana or Talia or Valentina up front leading you, making you feel at home no matter where you’re tuning in. I’ll be there too, a half-step behind, trying to get my hips to swivel, dancing like it’s saving my life.
The invitation is there, whether you are in the bay area or you are in China right now, like it doesn't matter where you are. You could just show up as simple as that you can login to classes. We have classes that are being offered on soon that are live classes every day of the week. And then we have in-person classes for people in the bay area, particularly in Oakland, from yoga and Samba
And then online, we were launching a new version of our website and they idea would be that it's clear that you can not only take these classes online when they're live, but there's also a library. That you can take classes on demand because as our BC schedules are sometimes maybe 11:00 PM is the best time for you to exercise.
So we want to make sure that we don't miss you if the live class schedule is now, what's there for you. So on demand, live online in person in the bay area, and then always with the opportunity to create events and special programs for different corporations or people like we are invited sometimes for celebrations and companies that are trying to get the team into a more healthier, in a little healthier habits of like 15 minute break.
So we're available just to be here in your life.