Ballet Hispánico dancers performing “Club Havana” (photo by Joseph Sinnott)
The nation’s leading Hispanic/Latine dance company Ballet Hispánico brings an audience-interactive performance to the Performing Arts Center SLO at 7 p.m. on September 24.
“It was created to show the breadth and depth of who we are as Latinos in America,” according to Artistic Director and CEO Eduardo Vilaro, who says the company, originally founded in 1970 by Tino Ramirez to uplift the Latino community, is a movement.
We go out into the community and serve the community with joy and an experience of dance.”
“It’s a movement because we do three things,” the acclaimed choreographer says. “We celebrate the Latino cultures here in America. We uplift young people who are looking to be artists—we train, we give scholarships, we inspire the next generation, and not only Latino kids, all kids that come to us. And then three, we go out into the community and serve the community with joy and an experience of dance.”
Vilaro began as a dancer for Ballet Hispánico in 1985. He plans to take the audience through Latin social dance moves at the end of the show, where audience members can participate from their seats. “It’s going to be great.”
Three dances—House of Mad’moiselle, Buscando a Juan, and Club Havana—will be performed by the company’s 15 members during the performance, which is presented by Cal Poly Arts.
“They’ll be doing three different pieces that night that each have a different flavor,” according to Cal Poly Arts Director Molly Clark. “But it culminates in a piece called Club Havana, which really takes people back to Cuba in the 1950s.” The piece includes conga, rumba, mambo, and cha cha taught by Pedro Ruiz.
House of Mad’moiselle explores iconic female representations found in Latin American culture.
Buscando a Juan is about Juan de Pareja, an enslaved Afro-Spanish artist who was the assistant for seventeenth-century Spanish artist Diego Velázquez. “Why I love this piece is that I got to delve in and really bring out themes of transatlantic slavery,” Vilaro says. “There is a depth to that experience for people, and it really just lifts up the veil to get us to understand the inter-sectionalities that come together to make us who we are as Latinos, because we do have an African legacy.
“We are not a monolith, we’re so much,” Vilaro continues. “And so I was thrilled to be able to create a work that has a lot of those themes.”
Editor’s Note: A pre-show Q&A with Eduardo Vilaro and Molly Clark will begin at 6 p.m., and following the performance audience members are encouraged to remain in their seats as Vilaro leads the audience in Latin social dance moves.