Maria Moreira

Maria leads Afroluso dance group together with her sister Ana. Afroluso was created to promote African Portuguese culture in Norfolk, but it does much more than that. Starting with only three members in 2012, now the group consists of many international dancers, who are talented in a mixture of dancing styles. The group’s first show was organised during the Black History month and caused a big impact. Many boys and girls who watched the performance fell in love with the rhythmic flow and were excited to learn the traditional dance. Now the group consists of English, Lithuanian, Polish, and Romanian members, as well as those with African Portuguese background. Kids with special needs come to enjoy the music. For Maria it means a lot. For her the dance is a way of communicating with strangers that sparks interest where none was shown before. She enjoys sharing her knowledge with the members of the local community. “I call it our happy hour: when the class ends and people come to say: you can’t even imagine how dancing impacts my life! And we can see the difference it makes: some people came here very shy and were hiding in a corner, but now they are really confident, and they love it. Seeing this is very rewarding”, says the group leader.

Even though she has lived in Great Yarmouth for a decade now and has a large part of her family here, Maria doesn’t think of it as her home. The language and cultural barriers made her feel excluded from the community when she moved to the town ten years ago with her kids. “I remember looking at people and saying: oh my God, I don’t belong here... I have some things that make me feel like at home. I’ve got a part of my family here, my sister, my niece. Smell of food can sometimes remind me of home. The Portuguese community is large here, so I can go to a Portuguese restaurant any time. But I still feel my home is Portugal”, explains Maria. Even though a lot has changed in the last ten years and Great Yarmouth became much more diverse than it used to be, local people are still too close-minded to be interested in new cultures, she admits. However, she appreciates the change and adds that the diversity of the town made an impact on her life: “Being in contact with so many people from so many backgrounds always brings something better for you. I’m a different person for sure”.