Mapalé Artes y Letras is a publication in Spanish and English that promotes art, literature and culture.
Mapalé Artes y Letras offers a broad vision of the artistic and cultural world by featuring artists from Latin-America, Spain, Canada and around the world. It is published in Canada, with the help of collaborators from Canada, Latin-America, Europe, and beyond.
Why Mapalé?
It is a simple, strong, suggestive and intriguing word. The dance is extremely energetic and exuberant and somehow represent an inner pulsion towards the exterior, towards change, an irrepressible urge to express, to feel, to experience and more.
Mapalé is the image of all of those who express their inner strength through artistic creation.
As a dance, Mapalé is part of the ancestral heritage of a Latin-American country, though it is mostly ignored by most. The history of Mapalé itself shows that culture and tradition never die, keep living, growing, gaining from their new life elsewhere.
Mapalé is a traditional dance brought to Cartagena, Colombia more than 400 years ago by slaves from Guinea. A couples’ dance, it is characterized by frenetic and erotic movements comprised of a succession of jumps, falls, pursuits and mock confrontations between the dancers.
Mapalé is also the name of a fish. Legend has it that fishermen used to dance after a good fishing day, and that the dance’s movements represent the movements of a fish out of water.
WHO WE ARE
