For Sindy Chown, dance is belonging: within one’s own body, within a culture, within a community. 

“When someone dances with their heart, you see it in their face,” Chown said. Their eyes will light up, and a smile will bloom on their face. “It’s like a coming together — for yourself.”

Chown started dancing as a toddler, watching people in her hometown of Barranquilla, Colombia, and following along. From an early age, she was praised for the spirit with which she danced: her family and friends would tell her that she became a new person when the music came on. She dreamed of dancing professionally, but it was out of reach for her family, led by a single mother. When she started teaching — starting first with Zumba classes — something just felt right. 

For the last five years, Chown has taught dance in Concord, both traditional Colombian dances and other styles, for free. Her group, Barranquilla Flavor, was born from her regular performances in Concord’s Multicultural Festival, which she now co-chairs. Alongside her daughter, Soraya, Chown teaches weekly classes of kids starting at age five who perform at events and festivals around the state. Now, at its largest ever with 20 members, the group performs and attracts kids in the Concord area from all backgrounds, connecting them to friends, skills and confidence they otherwise wouldn’t have, their parents said. 

In the few years they’ve been Chown’s students, Christina Miller has watched her two granddaughters transform. 

“They both have this look” when they dance, she said. “You can see the joy on them.” 

Both the perseverance of learning the steps and the confidence it takes to perform are no small feat for her granddaughters, Miller said. Ages nine and 11, one has a large scar on her body from a medical procedure when she was born and the other faced trauma in her early years. 

It is one thing for Miller to tell her granddaughters that they are strong and beautiful — but when they dance, she said, they see it for themselves. 

When she started, Hannah MacBride’s daughter Susan “was terrified of dancing generally and also in front of people.”

At first, she wanted to quit. But Chown didn’t let her give up, and she’s a leader in her group now, MacBride said. 

“She’s this combination of strict and loving,” MacBride said of Chown. “She can tell who is maybe having a tough day or who needs more.”

For many in the group, dance classes and performances around the state at cost wouldn’t otherwise be financially accessible.

Parents with the group work together, pooling resources to support the program, including travel and covering costs of the costumes that Chown brings in from Colombia. If someone needs a ride to practice, Chown will pick them up.

Thinking about the financial barriers her family faced in Barranquilla, “I try to prevent that for these kids, that they cannot follow their dream because their family cannot afford it,” Chown said. 

Chown became involved with the multicultural festival performing traditional Colombian cumbia with Soraya. Over time, as her role in helping organize the festival grew, her performances did as well. In 2019, when she became co-chair, she decided to give local kids the opportunity to learn a dance and join in, and Barranquilla Flavor was born. 

While Chown brings in her own background, she also encourages her students to do the same. 

“Dances share culture, and I love that they can share their own culture, be comfortable in their own culture,” Chown said. “It doesn't matter where you're from, if you're from America, or across the world. You will have a place in the program to educate others.”

Anshu Shrestha’s daughter, Anya Vaidya, has been performing traditional Nepali dances since she was six. But her four years as a member of Barranquilla Flavor has opened doors. Vaidya is working with Chown and others to choreograph the group’s performance at the Concord Multicultural Festival. Previously taking on Colombian and Brazilian styles, this year the show will be Nepali, according to Chown. 

Like other parents, Shrestha said her daughter, normally shy, is exuberant while dancing. 

“She is really more of an introvert, but when she’s performing you cannot tell,” Shrestha said. Getting to teach others, previously for small group performances and next for the entire class, only takes that confidence to the next level. “She knows she can do it.”

In addition to the inner strength dance builds, Chown and Barranquilla Flavor are a source of community and cross-cultural connection spanning beyond the circles of school or neighborhood for its members — for both the dancers and their parents. 

“When we joined, we actually joined just to participate in the multicultural festival,” Zandra Rice Hawkins said of her daughter, Annabelle. “Instead we've joined this really beautiful, diverse community of dancers and community members, and have had a chance to explore multicultural festivals all over the state.” 

MacBride, who quickly became close with other parents as the seamstress of the group and as a Spanish speaker, said that the community pulling from across the Capitol Region means a lot to her daughter, whom she homeschools. 

It is huge for students in the group to have an adult who is firm but positive with them, MacBride said, “especially for kids who may not get that elsewhere… She just cares. A lot.”

While Chown, like any dance teacher, wants her students to perform at their best, what matters most to her is getting to ignite a similar flame in her students that has burned within her as a lifelong dancer. 

“If I can see kids enjoying, loving dance, that’s what I’m always looking for.”