by Jess Clark / photos by Stewart O'Shields

In a stark, cavernous dance studio, eight women twist and wiggle across the floor, alternately facing a wall of mirrors and then large windows that survey the nighttime silence of Roberts Street in Asheville. Urging them on is an insistent, upbeat Latin piano-and-brass tune with rhythms that move the women’s feet as though they were hopping on hot sand. No, it’s not an art experiment or an aerobics class, but it certainly seems to get everyone’s blood pumping. This is a rehearsal for Dulcinea, one of the area’s only all-women Latin dance groups

The Dulcinea dance team strikes a pose at Sky Top Apple Orchard in Flat Rock. From left to right, Deyanira Chavez, Mario Chavez, Melody Joy, Rachael Yisrael, Dulcinea founder Maria Voisin and Hector Gutierrez. CREDITS: Stylist and garment designer, R. Brooke Priddy & Ship to Shore. Makeup artist, E.Scott Thompson. Hair designers, Johnny Annarino and Moriah Luzius. Additional garments provided by Honey Pot and Ragtime Vintage Clothing in Asheville.The dancers, some in heels, some in slippers, flutter their arms and practice deft footwork—and try to maintain smiles for an imagined audience. The rehearsal, not easy, is nevertheless immensely enjoyable. “It’s just like learning a language. You start from scratch and you build up,” says Dulcinea member Deyanira Chavez, 23, who moved to Asheville from her native Mexico. “It’s a music that breaks barriers.”

Dulcinea’s founder Maria Voisin grew up visiting her grandparents in the Dominican Republic and frequently travels to Cuba to study Afro-Cuban dance. Dulcinea, named after the title character’s would-be lover in Don Quixote, includes about a dozen people, many non-Latina. Dulcinea has performed around the Southeast with a mixed repertoire of mambo, salsa, cha-cha and Afro-Cuban, and they’ll be performing in two high-profile events—a Cinco de Mayo Latin dance showcase at Asheville’s Club 11 and a regional salsa showcase in Greenville, South Carolina—in the next few months.
Maria Voisin, a 34-year-old who grew up visiting her grandparents in the Dominican Republic, formed Dulcinea last fall. She owns Asheville’s Salseros 828 studio and travels frequently to Cuba to study Afro-Cuban dance traditions. When she began teaching salsa in Asheville in 1999, “People thought I was a weirdo,” she recalls. “They’d never seen salsa from Cuba before. There was a lot of resistance.” Now there are several Latin dance workshops and classes available around town, from the Asheville YWCA’s Latin dance class to Tango Asheville’s weekly dance at Filo Pastries, and even monthly salsa nights in unlikely spots, like Westgate Shopping Center’s Oriental Pavilion restaurant. Voisin and others have aimed to create a comfortable community for Latin dance, and today, her beginner classes draw dozens of students, with up to 100 people attending her salsa dances Fridays at Eleven on Grove.

Dancers Rachael Yisrael and Deyanira Chavez.Amidst all this activity and interest, Dulcinea has stepped things up a notch. At their premier last October at Fiesta Latina, Asheville’s annual Latin festival, Dulcinea’s spare black-and-white outfits and heels turned heads. “Together on stage they seemed to be all in unison and to vibe really well together as a team,” says Sarah Nunez, a festival organizer. “And also that energy that was exemplified out into the crowd, it just made you want to get up and dance.”

The energy and freedom of the group is what hooks some Dulcinea members. As a women-only Latin dance ensemble, it bucks a cultural trend.  “In Latin dance, men are the leaders, and the women follow or support,” Voisin says. “I saw a lot of my women dancers were very ambitious, and they wanted to go further, and so did I.” Ashevillean Rachael Yisrael, 26, a server at the Grove Park Inn, says she likes the fact that so many women of different shapes, sizes and ages can dance together. “It makes me feel like it’s a safe place where I can really fit in. No one has to be perfect in this group,” she says. Dulcinea member Audra Montoya, a 25-year-old Ashevillean who works at an insurance company, says dancing without a partner is liberating. “I feel like I’m not having to rely on a partner to do certain turns or moves that he’s actually commanding me to do. I’m expressing my own self and my own body in a way that I want to,” she says. “Salsa has literally changed my life. I have friends I never would have had before. It’s just opened me to a new culture.”

Introducing Asheville to a new culture was as much Voisin’s aim as teaching people dance steps. The dances and classes “have created a very cool dialogue between Latinos and Anglos here. Whatever prejudices they have…become challenged,” she says. Voisin’s pal, Argentine tango teacher Karen Jaffe, says many non-Latino students show up because they are interested in Latin culture. “It definitely brings an appreciation for at least the dance culture of Argentina and encourages people to travel,” she says.

Tango, with its drawn-out movements and touching torsos, sometimes inspires Jaffe’s students to visit Argentina. But salsa, fast and flashy with its bongos, maracas and guitars, usually attracts the largest crowds. Salsa is “very joyful and uplifting. When you dance salsa, you feel very happy afterwards,” Voisin says. Dulcinea’s members do look happy on their feet. “Maybe it’s about just really embracing the idea of being a woman in all the different aspects,” Voisin says. “There’s an ultimate femininity in some of the movements we do.”