![]() Liz-Cepeda also works as a media specialist at Boggy Creek Elementary School and has two children. We have created a community for them, it’s not just taking the classes.” “So our dance school has made a great impact in our community because we’ve been able to give that part of the traditions and the culture to those Puerto Ricans who are here in the diaspora, and they can reach out to us, they can sit with us. Now, through her virtual platforms and social media, she’s been able to increase her audience and reach people from across the globe. Liz-Cepeda opened her non-profit with the mission to give Puerto Ricans in Central Florida a piece of home through in-person classes and performances. Her daughter Barbara Liz-Cepeda opened Escuela de Bomba y Plena Tata Cepeda and named it after her mother to honor her while she’s alive. Margarita “Tata” Cepeda is the granddaughter of Rafael Cepeda, the patriarch of Bomba and Plena. “Because of the pandemic and because we were trying to reach out and expand ourselves, we were thinking, how can we also offer back to the community? What are we also giving back?” Liz-Cepeda said. They are on their third book now, moving to their fourth book soon which will be, ¡Negro, Negra!, a compilation of lectures about Afro-descendants of Puerto Rico. She began a virtual book study where people from the United States and Puerto Rico meet every Saturday over Zoom and discuss topics about Black Lives Matter, slavery and Puerto Rico’s history and how it affects us today. “We have to be creative and think about things where we could reach the people, where we can reach the community.” “The good part of Covid-19 and the pandemic is that because we were seeing ourselves regressing in a way that we were not reaching the amount of people that we wanted,” Liz-Cepeda said. So, she had to get creative to find new ways to reach a larger audience. No matter how much teaching or how much playing Liz-Cepeda would do, it just wasn’t enough. Class enrollment decreased due to the pandemic and students said the experience and feeling wasn’t what they felt in the studio. You depend on the Internet.”īoth Liz-Cepeda and her students felt the classes weren’t the same. But you depend on having to move the computer if you’re on virtual… you have to lower the screen, you have to move back. “You would like to be there and hug people and dance and show the moves. “There’s not that much interaction,” Liz-Cepeda said. When it came to virtual teaching, Liz-Cepeda turned her living room into her studio in just a few days, but it wasn’t the same. Barbara Liz-Cepeda wears a custom-tailored skirt with the Puerto Rican flag on it while she dances to the beat of the Bomba drums in her living room in Kissimmee, Fl. Plena and Bomba at the Puerto Rican Institute of Music profiles the director and instructor of PRIM, Alberto Pagán-Ramírez, and his students, united by their love for Puerto Rican music and its deeply historical musical traditions, particularly Plena and Bomba music. Precious Places teaches the video production process to participating groups, fostering projects authored by those who intimately know the featured neighborhoods. The Precious Places Community History Project is a community oral history project inviting members of the Philadelphia region's many neighborhoods to document the buildings, public spaces, parks, landmarks and other sites that hold the memories of our communities and define where we live. Home Video DVD License – Restrictions Apply | $20.00 Higher Education Institutions & Government Agency DVD | $139.00 This video is available for purchase as part of a Precious Places Community History Project Vol. Home Video DVD License – Restrictions Apply | $5.95 Higher Education Institutions & Government Agency DVD | $49.95
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