Cortez's discoveries.

Hernando Cortez's charity group, Dancers Responding to AIDS, keeps vaulting for a good cause after nine years

Twelve years ago Hernando Cortez was helping a fellow dancer who was terminally ill with AIDS pack his clothes and return to his hometown. Cortez, then a star dancer with the Paul Taylor Dance Company, had to fight back not only tears of sadness but tears of rage. "He was forced to move from New York back to Peoria because there wasn't a support system set up," says Cortez. "He had no money. When you stop dancing you stop making your income. And it just got me so mad that he couldn't stay here."

While other arts groups had established resources for people with AIDS, "the dance community hadn't gotten it together," Cortez explains. "And we were really hard-hit." In 1991, out of his Chelsea living room, Cortez mobilized dancers to sell T-shirts commemorating dancers who had died. That same year he and over 100 other fund-raising dancers stole the thunder from sequined drag queens at the New York Lesbian and Gay Pride March as they leaped and kicked in a phalanx down Fifth Avenue.

"I remember those dancers coming down the street and knocking the crowd on their ass," says Rodger McFarlane, one of the godfathers of AIDS activism. McFarlane immediately asked Cortez to come under the umbrella of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, which he directed, and Dancers Responding to AIDS--best known for its annual summer fund-raiser on Fire Island--was born.

McFarlane explains why Cortez has been so successful at his mission: "All AIDS activism occurs because one person steps out of their prescribed role. Hernando saw his civic responsibility and definition of himself as greater than a dancer. He provided a real service to his artistic family." Besides, McFarlane adds with droll irony, "He's dumb, he's ugly, and completely devoid of charm."

Television and Broadway star Bebe Neuwirth, who has hosted several benefits for DRA, praises what Cortez has created: "Dancers express in a physical way," she says. "Dancers respond to music, dancers respond to space, dancers respond to their emotions, dancers respond to their environment. It's only natural that they would respond to AIDS through their art form and creativity. Because of Hernando's beauty, optimism, grace, and spirit, that response of the dancers continues to go in a direction that can be most constructive."

Cortez, who won a special Dance Magazine award in 1997 for instituting DRA, is now 35. Born in Manila and raised in Vancouver, Canada, he left for New York in 1982 to study dance at Purchase College. "As soon as I got off the plane at Kennedy Airport ... that was my coming-out," he says with a laugh. Four years later Paul Taylor offered him a contract to dance with his company at a time when the group featured what Cortez calls "the Paul Taylor football-player look--big, strapping men." Cortez, with his especially athletic and exotic good looks, became an audience favorite in works like "Company B," "Danbury Mix," "Airs," and the robustly powerful "Arden Court."

"He's everything I love in a dancer," says McFarlane. "He's beautiful, he's masterful, he's elegant, he's sexy, and he's not pretentious." His vivacity also caught Mikhail Baryshnikov's eye, so the superstar invited Cortez to dance on his White Oak Project's 1998 tour.

Cortez used his artistic smarts five years ago to branch out with his own dance troupe, Cortez & Co. Contemporary/Ballet, which steered toward choreography that was "more outwardly gay." One of the first pieces he created, "Out of the Darkness," was prompted by the gay bashing of two friends in Greenwich Village; two video screens showed fleeting images of switchblades as Cortez danced downstage.

Now that Cortez's company has grown to include eight dancers, Village Voice dance critic Deborah Jowitt says, "He's lavish with his talent. He's generous with movement, and his dances are full of feeling." Last summer Cortez took his talent for movement to the Manhattan church-turned-disco, the Limelight, where margarita-swigging clubgoers could taste his company's fusion of modern dance, pop, and balletic styles.

A benchmark for inventive fundraising, the Cortez-inspired annual DRA benefit, featuring dance luminaries performing on a stage near the beach, is one of the social highlights of the Fire Island Pines season. This year's event featured dancers from American Ballet Theatre, Paul Taylor Dance Company, Cortez & Co. Contemporary/Ballet, and Momix as well as Robert LaFosse of the New York City Ballet as a lavishly scarfed Isadora Duncan.

"What saves DRA from becoming maudlin or morose," says Neuwirth, "is the fact that Hernando is one of the people at the helm." Adds McFarlane: "Hernando represents everything that is good in this tragedy."

Carman also writes for The New York Times.

Find more on Dancers Responding to AIDS and Broadway Cares/Equity FIghts AIDS at www.advocate.com