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On the poorly lit stage of a public school auditorium on 183rd Street, a dozen or so young people learn dances that date back more than two hundred years.

These dances and music are still used by some in the Dominican community to celebrate and communicate with their revered saints. But a new generation of artists is borrowing the old rhythms to reconnect with their Afro-Dominican roots - roots that until recently had been denied.

More now than reggaeton, in the Dominican community of New York City palos music is hot.

“We’ll be in the middle of a party giving a workshop on palos,” said Ariel Ferreira, a young real estate broker who has been dancing with Alianza Dominicana’s Conjunto Folklorico troup since he was a teenager. “I take it personally. If you do it the wrong way, if you’re not educated, I will educate you.”

During the rehearsal of a tale from a collection called the Colonial Caves, the Conjunto Folklorico shows the climax of religious rituals, where a saint’s spirit overtakes a person intoxicated by tobacco, rum and the beat of long drums called palos. In the show, the dancer called caballo, or horse, enters a state of trance and adopts that saint’s personality. If, for example, Saint Anne, a feminine and flirtatious saint, possesses the caballo, he or she may put on jewelry and makeup and move and dance in a sensual way.

The performance of these rituals in the Dominican Republic’s towns and villages was for many years attributed to the Haitian invasion of the country in the 1800s. In reality, these traditions originate with African slaves, who were brought to the island by Spanish colonizers. By adopting Catholic saints to disguise their African gods, a practice called syncretism, the slaves were able to practice their religion in the open.

But it has taken the Dominican people many years to understand and accept their African heritage.

Dr. Milagros Ricourt, chair of Latin American Studies at CUNY Lehman College in the Bronx, explained that Dominican intellectuals have sought a distinction between black Haiti and Spanish Dominican Republic since the birth of the country. They established Dominicans as Catholic, with a Spanish heritage and good moral values, she said. In contrast, Haitians were seen as blacks from Africa who had a satanic religion and a “language that isn’t a language” and who were immoral and filthy.

“I don’t even believe that people doing that relate their practices to Africa,” said Dr. Ricourt of the those who take part in Afro-Dominican religious ceremonies. “Is coming, who knows, from Jupiter?”

In the diaspora, Dominicans recognized and understood their African past after encountering racism and discrimination in the U.S.

It is a sense of pride and a deep understanding of his African self that drives percussionist Joan D’Leon-Metz to study, learn and teach palos and other Afro-Dominican rhythms.

“This cannot die,” said D’Leon Metz. “This is part of my culture. And I gotta learn it, I gotta absorb it and keep the tradition and show it to the next generation.”

So, in a Bronx apartment with a bedroom just big enough for a twin bed, dresser and several kinds of drums, he sits and learns rhythms once pounded out by slaves who had toiled in the sugarcane under the tropical Dominican sun.

Another artist who feels a personal responsibility to spread this type music is singer-songwriter Irka Mateo, who recently moved from the Dominican Republic to Brooklyn to record her first album.

“I really wanted to learn my roots. And for me it was really, really important to know what being Dominican was,” said Mateo. “By the music, I learned to be Dominican. And I fell in love with our culture.”

And Dominican-Americans are responding to the passion of artists like D’Leon Metz and Mateo. On Tuesday nights he performs at La Cueva de la Amistad, a restaurant on Broadway in the Bronx, for a young set who have a new interest in the old drums.

Young Dominicans in New York are just as happy dancing palos as they are breaking down on provocative reggaeton moves. Some are even surprised at how sensual palos dancing can be.

“I see my parents dancing palo, and it’s the same thing as reggaeton, except they dress in white,” said Marlene Alba, member of the Domincan Club at Lehman College. “That’s fun. I’m like, ‘Go, Mami!’”

Dr. Ricourt, of Lehman College, said a change in the attitudes of Dominicans back on the island might come in the near future as the diaspora returns home and brings back their new-found pride and identity.

“I’m Dominican in many different ways, but it’s a Dominicaness rooted in the true meaning of being Dominican. I’m not in denial anymore,” said Dr. Ricourt. “I see my nose and I don’t want to go and do plastic surgery.”

Ferreira, the dancer of the Conjunto Folklorico, likened the pride he has found for his heritage to the West African Adrinka symbol for a bird called the Sankofa. The bird is looking backwards while it flies. “You never know where you are going without knowing where you came from,” he said.