By RILEY WATTS

Amelia Fernanda Uzategui Bonilla is her name and don't you forget it. She's 21 years old and she knows how to raise enough money to send 10 people on a four-week tour to Peru. Her enormous brown eyes exude a warmth and charm that are matched only by her energetic work ethic. Without Amelia there would have been no tour of Peru. While we were there, a middle-aged man we met in Arequipa told us, "I like Amelia because I know I'll end up working for her some day." Amelia has passion.

Juilliard dancers perform Michelle Mola's Fish Out of Water for an audience gathered outdoors in Lima. (Photo by Michelle Mola)

In July 2005, Amelia went home to her native Peru and discovered what had been missing in her Los Angeles-raised life. She needed to experience firsthand the proud Peruvian culture that her family came from. During this first trip back since infancy, she went not only to rediscover family and roots, but also in hopes of finding young Peruvian artists like herself. What she encountered was a small but enthusiastic community thirsty for new and exciting art. Amelia performed a short but well received solo show in Cusco, after which she was made to promise that she would come back to bring more dance to Peru.

Soon after returning to Juilliard, Amelia posted a note on the dance board suggesting that anyone interested in a Peruvian tour the following summer should come to a meeting during lunch. Seven dancers from the class of 2007 showed up, including Michelle Mola, Logan Kruger, Doug Letheren, Annie Shreffler, Kevin Shannon, Troy Ogilvie and me. Eventually we added a friend from Brooklyn College, Michael Sheriff, to join us as a video documentarian, as well as Mauricio Salgado, a Juilliard drama alum who would act as our tour administrator. As a company, we dubbed ourselves the Public Dance Theater, and with sponsorship from Las Damas Peruanas de Madre Teresa de Calcuta, a Peruvian ladies' society in Los Angeles, we became a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, ready to find the money to make such a trip a reality. Eventually, thanks to the Juilliard Summer Grant program and many private donors, we raised enough money to cover our entire trip. Through Amelia's connections in Peru, we had theater space made available to us, as well as homes, hotels, and hostels in which to stay, along with food and guides to help us get to our destinations.

The aim of our tour was not only to perform as a dance company; in addition, we taught free workshops to anyone who was interested. In the capital city of Lima, we worked with students at major universities as well as at a children's resource center in the most impoverished part of the city. In the dry mountain city of Arequipa, we worked in conjunction with a cultural and language center and taught creative movement to adolescents whose training had been solely in traditional Peruvian dance. Cusco, the capital of the ancient Incan empire, was a great challenge to us. We knew the altitude of the city would be an issue, but we didn't know that teaching a three-hour workshop would land Kevin in the hospital with severe altitude sickness. Despite mildly debilitating symptoms, the rest of us managed to teach four days of workshops and perform our full repertoire very successfully with the help of an oxygen tank.

Dance workshops conducted in the heart of the jungle in Atalaya elicited enthusiastic participation from youngsters. (Photo by Doug Letheren)

Perhaps the most life-changing experience, though, was a trip to the jungle city of Atalaya. This is not a place where tourists go, simply because there is no easy way to get there. We took a 10-hour bus ride over the highest mountain road in the country, followed by a nauseatingly bumpy car ride into the Amazon jungle, finishing with a seven-hour boat ride down an offshoot of the Amazon River. At the end of 23 hours of travel, we were greeted by a resilient and slowly developing port city of about 30,000 residents, drawn from several indigenous tribes in the surrounding areas. We knew how potentially dangerous it was to travel into the jungle and had considered not going—but in the end, Atalaya became the strangest and most rewarding part of the entire trip. For three days we taught workshops to children, adolescents, and adults, followed by a special performance including all the students in a large, concrete sports arena called the Coliseum. It felt strange and new to have an audience of people who, until that very moment, had only seen their regional dances. The Coliseum was packed with locals who had seen or met us on the streets or had family members in our workshops. The performance became about the children, and we got to leave our egos behind. For dancers with as much concert dance experience as we have, Atalaya be-came the perfect place to take a breath of fresh air and experience another side of performing.

As artists, what we do is important. We thrive when we are surrounded by a community, and it is our duty to pass what we are learning on to other generations. We crave knowledge and experience—and this tour is only the first major project of many to come. For all of us, it was a source of momentum that will carry us through this year and into our professional lives. We hope to continue this work not only in Peru, but also at home in America through Juilliard programs like ArtReach and the Community Service Fellowship, as well as independent work outside school walls. Above all, the month in Peru became a reminder that we dance because we are artists and because we love art. Gracias por todo, Amelia.

Riley Watts is a fourth-year dance student.