Terri Larson and her husband have attended the New Year celebration in La Crosse two years in a row. “Usually when we go, we don’t see many people like us there, but they welcome you totally,” says Larson, who has bright, blond hair. “They just don’t look at you like you’re different or anything.” Yang says the Hmong and non-Hmong communities in La Crosse get along very well, and her group is always invited to perform at special community events.

The odd man out

Groups across the state like Yang’s, Walker’s and Cole’s are helping to cross cultural borders. “[Dance] is such a community-based event across almost all cultures that it really fosters an idea that a lot of people fear that Americans may be losing, which is the ideal of community over self and your neighbor over your individual self,” Buchanan says.

Barb Westhofen, 72, has been dancing for about 30 years with the Folk Dancers of the Fox Valley, and her nimble steps are still right on the lively Czechoslovakian rhythm that fills the second floor studio of the Menasha Memorial Building every Monday evening. “[Dance] is really an elemental way of being in touch with other cultures,” she says. “It’s a really unifying thing in the community.”

But it’s not easy to break cultural boundaries. Buchanan’s experience is a testament to the fractured relationships existing among cultures in Wisconsin. Although she eventually found acceptance among her black classmates, she initially struggled. “As open-minded or as liberal that any of us feel we are, it’s a testament to why it might be hard for someone who’s not white coming to our campus because it is a very unnerving feeling being the odd person out,” she says. In the beginning of the class, Buchanan lived by her father’s advice: You have to be willing to share parts of your own culture to be seen as genuine in wanting to learn about another.

Elizabeth Seim, a college student who grew up dancing with her mother in the Folk Dancers of Fox Valley, agrees that being genuine is key to understanding other cultures. “As Westerners, we do have sort of an obsession with minority, exotic, foreign things,” she says. “I think there is a fine line between experiencing a different culture and … treating it with respect, coming to it knowing that … you are learning something, and they are being gracious enough to open up this really special thing for you.”

Buchanan said the cultural group itself also has responsibilities in the process. “[Learning] only takes place when people within the culture are willing to facilitate the process. People want to break stereotypes. They want to educate others about their culture, but unless you facilitate the process and you’re open to people learning about it, it’s very close-ended,” she says.

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