Learn Bomba, Afro-Puerto Rican Bomba Dance Workshop

CulturalDC, in collaboration with Semilla Cultural, presents

Afro-Puerto Rican Bomba Dance Workshop

Led by Bomba Dance instructor, Isha M. Renta López & Multidisciplinary Artist and Student Collaborator, Amber Robles- Gordon

Bomba is an expression of Afro-Puerto Rican culture through dance.

Bomba represents Afro-Puerto Rican resistance, the musical genre, and dance developed 400 years ago by West African enslaved people on colonial plantations in the region. It remains the island's most popular folk music and is significant evidence of its rich African heritage.

4618 14th St NW,

Washington, DC 20011

$20 Adults, $10 youth, Free 9 & under

Isha M. Renta López is the founder and director of Semilla Cultural, a non-profit operating across Washington DC, Maryland, and Virginia, promoting and preserving the Puerto Rican heritage through bomba music and dance. Isha, born in Ponce, Puerto Rico, having moved to Washington DC for schooling and a meteorology career, began her studies of bomba in 2007 with the local organization ‘Raíces de Borinquen’. Since then, Isha has dedicated herself to the preservation and propagation of the Puerto Rican arts and culture. Throughout her journey, Isha has studied bomba percussion, dance, and songs from multiple bomba masters from Puerto Rico and the United States. Having founded Semilla Cultural in 2014, Isha now teaches, performs, provides seminars, and builds community throughout Washington DC, Virginia, and Maryland. Isha is fully committed to preserving and disseminating her culture to empower the communities while she continues her growth in this field.

Amber Robles-Gordon is an interdisciplinary visual artist of Puerto Rican and Caribbean descent who resides in Washington, DC. Her creations are visual representations of her hybridism: a fusion of her gender, ethnicity, cultural, political and social experiences and concerns. The underpinnings of her creations are imbued to reveal racial injustice and the paradoxes within the imbalance of masculine and feminine energies within our society. Known for recontextualizing non-traditional materials, her large scale assemblages, sculptures, collages, installations, and public artwork, in order to emphasize the essentialness of spirituality and temporality within life. Robles-Gordon is driven by the need to construct her own distinctive path, innovate, peel back the layers of injustice and challenge social norms, hence her artwork is unconventional and non-formulaic.
Robles-Gordon is an advocate with over fifteen years of exhibiting her artwork, as an art educator, and coordinating exhibitions. She received a Bachelor of Science, Business Administration in 2005 at Trinity University, and subsequently she completed her Master’s in Fine Arts (Painting) in 2011 from Howard University. Her artwork has been reviewed/featured in national media and art publications. Robles-Gordon, has been awarded artist and artist teaching residencies and exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally. She has been commissioned by art museums, galleries, art centers, universities/colleges, radio and television stations to teach workshops, lecture, and create temporary/permanent public art installations for art fairs, agencies, and institutions.
Currently Robles-Gordon is creating a multidisciplinary project titled “Reclamando mi tiempo, reclamando lo mío” which explores her maternal Puerto Rican heritage. Through the exploration of the Afro - Puerto Rican traditional dance, bomba, Robles-Gordon is navigating the connections between place, heritage and culture. In 2022, during her project development, Robles-Gordon began studying bomba with instructor Isha Renta, founder and Director of Semilla Cultural. Most recently, in 2023 she began performing with Semilla Cultural. Upon is its completion “Reclamando mi tiempo, reclamando lo mío” will be presented as a body of artwork and art-documentary that approaches Bomba is a theoretical framework for personal growth, cultural insight, building community, and political activism: I am attempting to retrieve aspects of my culture as an adult that I didn't get in my childhood. Additionally, I want to explore the tradition of Bomba y Plena personally as an act or activation of cultural pride and colonial resistance. By emerging herself within her richly intercultural history, Robles-Gordon is learning the history of Puerto Rico, and the Bomba, dances and rhythms, while building community. This project development is focused on the synergy and importance of the journey, the product/outcome, and creating strong bonds between the context in which Amber develops her artistic practice and the physical elements of her work. Robles-Gordon, is working in collaboration with Cultural DC, Washington, DC, El Cuadrado Gris Galería, Puerto Nuevo, Puerto Rico and Semilla Cultural, Washington, DC, to present a traveling exhibition upon completion of the project.

Recent exhibitions, solo presentations; Indiana State University, Terry Haute, Indiana (2024), Surely, She (he/we) is a little animal?, Morton Fine Art, Washington, DC (2023), Remnants: a visual journey of memory and renewal, International Arts and Artists at Hillyear, Washington, DC (2023), Sovereignty: acts, forms and measures of protest and resistance, Tinney Contemporary, Nashville, Tennessee (2022), Derek Ellery Gallery, New York, NY (2022), August Wilson African American Cultural Center, Pittsburgh, PA (2022), Successions: Traversing US Colonialism, American University Museum (2021), Place of Breath and Birth, Galleria de Arte, Universidad del Sagrado Corazón, San Juan, Puerto Rico (2020), Washington College, Chestertown, MD (2018), Third Eye Open, Morton Fine Art, Washington, DC (2018), Arts Center/Gallery, Delaware State University, Dover, DE (2017), and The Mosaic Project, Pennsylvania College of Art and Design, Lancaster, PA (2017) ;group exhibitions Butter Art Fair, Indianapolis, IN (2023), Knowhere Art Gallery, Martha’s Vineyard, Oaks Bluff, MA (2023), Puerto Rico Negrx, MAC Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico, San Juan, Puerto Rico (2023), Untitled Art Fair, Tafeta Gallery, Miami Beach, Florida (2022), Tafeta Gallery, London, United Kingdom (2021), Royal Academy of Art, Summer Exhibition, London, England (2021), 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, and London Art Week, London, United Kingdom (2020). Robles-Gordon is a participating artist in the following traveling exhibitions: Back and Forth: Keeping Time in Vaivén, University of Minnesota, Katherine E. Nash Gallery, Minneapolis, Minnesota (2025-2028), Imagining Archipelago, Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, ME (2026), Solace and Sisterhood, David C. Driskell Center, College Park, MD (2025), Solace and Sisterhood, Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington, Arlington, Virginia (2023), and Trenzando Identidades, Saludos cordiales, el Museo Casa Escuté del Municipio Autónomo de Carolina, La Humacao, Puerto Rico (2023).

Host or Publisher CulturalDC