Miami's Calle 8 Festival

Jorge Luis Morejon (center) with dancers Tahi Delgado (left),

Gloria Singali(right)and Maria del Carmen (front).

The comparsa class at Miami Dade College, Interamerican Campus, was fruitful. It performed in the Calle Ocho Festival, 1994, and it was followed by many people asking how they could get involved and dance. It was successful in mixing three age groups, the elderly, the young and the children, Cuban and non-Cuban equally immersed in the revival of a tradition. The support of the Kiwanis of Little Havana, Dr. Mercedes Sandoval and the Miami Dade College Interamerican Campus, then just a center of MDC Wolfson Campus, was very important. The collaboration of professionals such a Tahi Delgado and Gloria Singali gave the event the status of a spectacle. The Calle Ocho Festival, in many ways an attempt to recreate the Cuban Carnival in Miami, became more authentic that year as the comparsa traveled through Eight Street all the way to the main platform where the orchestra was playing the conga. But, most importantly, in the end, the comparsa became a real community of all sorts of people who simply loved to dance for fun.