Mission

Pa’lante promotes alternative community formation at Cornell University and in the greater Ithaca area. We accomplish this through the promotion of Latin and world music and dance, a fusion of artistic production with environmental and social justice activism, and the critical analysis of modern culture.  We contribute to a just and sustainable world by seeking to bridge the divide between body and mind, critique and action, and academia and its outside. We believe that universities, as nuclei of knowledge creation and resource concentration, ought to provide the means of transformative action suitable for the social aspirations and ecological necessities of our times.  Our contribution to this objective is to demonstrate the viability and desirability of integrating embodied cultural production, critical research and higher learning, social justice activism, community building, and an emphasis on holistic living, into a unified and self-generating whole.

The term “¡pa’lante!,” shorthand for “para adelante,” translates into English as “forward movement.” It has long been used as a call to action in protest and solidarity movements throughout the Spanish-speaking world, and is frequently employed as a mantra in the arts. "Pa'lante" evokes movement and inspiration. We adopt the namesake for this reason.

Proyecto ¡Pa’lante! promotes some of the most exciting Latin and world music nightlife happenings at Cornell and in the Central New York area. We engage nightlife and culture not as mere distraction to the grind of ascetic cultural norms and exploitative labor regimes, but as integral to a social endeavor that extols cooperation, connection and sensuality as cornerstones of an alternative society. As alternative to mainstream cultural production and its drive toward monopoly, gender, racial and sexual categorization, and the destruction of artistic diversity, we offer an experience of high-energy Latin and world music and dance in a collective and non-pretentious atmosphere open to everyone. Our productions serve as community benefits and mobilizers and in so doing highlight the oneness of collective creativity and social justice.