THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, June 3, 1995 TAG: 9506030411
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Charlise Lyles
LENGTH: Medium: 77 lines
She dances not too far from the HQ, the Burger King and the Meyers & Tabakin furniture store. Near Rosemont Road and Virginia Beach Boulevard amid the suburban blur of homes and homogeneity.
There she whirls in Mexican ruffles and a wide rainbow of a skirt: a flash of dark eyes, shiny magenta-colored lipstick, silver hoop earrings.
Beatriz Amberman has been there and everywhere around Hampton Roads for 13 years, dancing, relishing in her own Mexican culture as well as everybody else's ethnicity. As a folk dancer, lecturer, lover and lifetime learner of all peoples and all cultures, she was here long before anybody started talking about ``multiculturalism.'' Long before schools, corporations, city and state governments and newspapers caught on and hired diversity consultants, Amberman was there.
The multicultural awareness movement is a sign that some have realized that, like it or not, we are a diverse nation, and we can be strong because of it. Others have had less of an awakening. They simply know that diversity is good business, the bottom line.
These and others are listening more closely to people like Amberman. Last year, she was appointed to the Virginia Beach Human Rights Commission. Now she dances and goes to meetings, hoping the commission can create continuing forums for cultural exchange.
``Let our cultural differences become points of celebration, not of division, not how we can be apart, not how can we fight, but the beautiful differences we bring to this country,'' Amberman says.
It is one way, she says, that we can ``all just get along.''
Of course, Amberman - a native of Guadalajara, Mexico, and a Virginia Beach mother of two - loves foremost to share her own culture. On Saturdays, 7 a.m. to 1 p.m., you can hear her eloquent, perky Spanish and English at WHOV 88.1 FM on ``Hispanic Sounds''; Sundays, 3 to 6 p.m., ``Hispanic Sounds with Spices''; and Mondays, 4 to 4:30 p.m., her talk show ``Meet Our People'' (all English). Her mentor, Angel Morales, Maria Jackson, Caesar Lara and Oscar Seda can also be heard.
Or you can see her dance with her partner Ruben M. Cantu on Wednesdays and Sundays at La Fogata restaurant on Bonney Road, not too far from that HQ. In a silver-studded bolero suit and black boots with two dozen nails hammered into each heel, Cantu struts intricate zapateados steps on an oak platform as Amberman bedazzles. A five-piece mariachi band with trumpet and guitarron serenade. The food is hot; the ambience cool but lightly spiced with passion.
With local groups like the Michas Polish Folk Dance Ensemble, Amberman excels in the tarantella, the flamenco, the merengue, Russian folk. In casual conversation, she can't help but give you a mini lesson on the African influence in Hispanic music and dance.
And she's an eager almanac on Latin Americans: a total of 22.3 million Hispanics live in the U.S., according to the 1990 census; about 32,000 in Hampton Roads (Amberman's personal estimate is 40,000), representing 22 countries; at 13 million, Mexicans are the nation's largest Hispanic group. She's shared all that and more with the Navy, schools, the Virginia Opera, others.
Amberman's love of difference is a reminder that we all derive from a unique ethnic group, that there is no monolithic white culture, no monolithic black culture, no monolithic Hispanic culture.
So what if multiculturalism turns out to be a fad? Amberman will not fade.
``I keep close friendships with all kinds of people because I want to learn about every culture,'' she said, dark eyes flashing again. ``This is one of the things that I would thank God for, living in America. There is no other part of the world where an opportunity like this could be. I say opportunity because if I was in my own country, I couldn't get to know other people from other countries. What a treasure.'' ILLUSTRATION: JOSEPH JOHN KOTLOWSKI
Waiter Danny Castro peers over the shoulder of Beatriz Amberman
outside La Fogata, a Mexican restaurant in Virginia Beach, where
Amberman dances on Wednesdays and Sundays.
by CNB