Joao dos Santos

Joao dos Santos was born in the Portuguese village of Mir de Aire in Ribetejo, the province east of Lisbon which is the center of Portuguese bullfighting. He has been a musician playing the ret ret, a scraped wooden stick, with the Hartford-area dance group Rancho Folclorico do Clube Portugues de Hartford, and served as ensaiador, the dance instructor, in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Joao's specialty is fandango, which he learned from an older Ribatejano living in Hartford, Joachim Duarte. This dance done by two men facing each other while they swing long sticks under the other's feet, displays a contest of virility between cattle herders as they fight over a woman. Rarely performed by local folk dance groups in public in North America because of its difficulty, the fandango is also danced at weddings where its meaning can be eloquently expressed as part of the celebration. Joao taught fandango to two apprentices from the Ludlow Mass Portuguese folk dance group, in Year 7 (2004-2005) of the Southern New England Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program.