BALLET FOLKLORICO DE MEXICO
almost too fast for the eye to see. It feels as if the whole theater will fly away in the delirium. This is the finale to Ballet Folklorico de Mexico’s two-hour concert. And what a concert–exuberant, colorful, playful, and serious, it seems to embody Mexican culture.
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Company founder Amalia Hernandez is something of a legend in her homeland. She’s also a bit of a maverick. At eight she persuaded her father, a Mexican senator who didn’t want his daughter in “a profession that meant public exhibition,” to let her study ballet and flamenco. Some of Europe’s top dancers came to teach her at a private studio built on the family ranch. But while European movement intrigued her, the music left her cold. Her heart was drawn to the people around her. Their music was spontaneous and lively; their dance was a fast-stepping, passionate combination of Indian, French, Spanish, and African movement. Convinced that this music and dance had artistic merit, Dona Amalia founded her own folklore company in 1952. It was Mexico’s first.
Even swirling skirts and stomping feet can get dull after a while. Ballet Folklorico offered ten dances, each depicting a different slice of Mexican life. To an untrained eye unable to pick out regional differences, much of the movement seems repetitious. Yet each dance has its entertaining moments. And when the company breaks into Jalisco–the final number, containing the jarabe tapatio, known here by the silly name “Mexican hat dance”–it becomes clear that dance is a universal communicator of the soul.
