Just a few years ago Powell alum Dakota Hansen could be found performing in Powell High School’s musicals as well as the All Northwest Choir her senior year.

Hansen, now a University of Wyoming music major, is still performing. Most recently she sang a piece in Portuguese while in Brazil for two weeks at the end of May.

It was a little nerve wracking, because she was singing in front of native speakers, she said. Normally when she sings in a foreign language she is singing to people who don’t speak the language.

“I had to learn what my song meant and how to say it and [pronouncing] Portuguese is so, so hard. They have what's called nasal vowels, which means the sound comes out of your nose … they’re very different from what we use and that was really hard to learn at first,” Hansen said.

She was worried about mispronouncing a word so she worked with several people who spoke Portuguese to nail the pronunciation. During the concert Hansen only had one mispronunciation and afterwards she was complimented on her performance. 

But Hansen was not in Brazil just to perform, she was in the South American country as part of a study abroad trip under UW Professor Theresa Bogard, who teaches piano and is the keyboard area coordinator. The professor frequently travels to Brazil, Hansen said, and had created the 16-day trip for students who wanted to “experience the music, the culture and just the different community of musicians.” 

They listened to a lot of classical music, Hansen said, but it was still different from what she’s learned at UW which is primarily Western classical music. 

“Obviously it's a different language, and it just has a very different feel, and I wanted to learn about it,” she said. 

If she becomes a choir teacher in the future she would introduce her future students to music from different cultures so they have more of an understanding of what can be created.

One genre of music that stuck out to her was forró music, something the students discovered while visiting a dance club in their free time.

“I've never heard of it before, and it's got a different rhythm than what's more frequently used … in [Western music], so it sounds different, and the rhythm is kind of hard to catch on to at first, and then you kind of find it,” Hansen said.

They were also able to track down a little bit of samba music.

What really stood out to Hansen was the warm and welcoming nature of the people she met in Brazil.

“I got a couple of lessons with a teacher there. At the end of my performance, she came and she told me, ‘Good job,’ and ‘You did so well, I'm so proud of you.’ … it's just a very sweet and warm community,” Hansen said.