HIGH SCHOOL DANCERS STEP INTO CULTURE AND CONFIDENCE.

NANCY RODRIGUEZ IS A SHY, QUIET 16-YEAR-OLD WHO ATTENDS MOISES E. MOLINA HIGH SCHOOL IN DALLAS, TEXAS. WALKING THROUGH THE HALLS OF HER SCHOOL, THIS PETITE, RESERVED GIRL COULD EASILY BE LOST AMONG THE more than 2,100 students around her. But when Rodriguez steps onstage with the school's dance company, Ballet Folklorico Jaguara, she is transformed into a confident, electric young woman: "When I dance, I can express exactly how I feel." Not only has the company given Rodriguez more confidence on and offstage, but she has learned a great deal about her Mexican heritage. "Folklorico has taught me so much about my culture," she says, "and that is the most important thing to me."

"Folklorico is the history of Mexico in dance," says Liz Gallego, an accomplished dancer, teacher, and the founder and director of Ballet Folklorico Jaguara. It's a history Gallego has had to learn herself. She grew up studying ballet and Spanish dance in Loredo, Texas, but never learned any folklorico as a child. Unlike flamenco, which was imported from Spain, folklorico was created in the New World by the descendants of Spanish settlers and native Mexicans. "Until the 1960s, folklorico's mestizo (or ethnically mixed) roots were looked down upon," she says.

Folklorico comes from Mexico's traditional dances, but it is not folk dancing. Instead, it is a theatrical interpretation of dances such as the salsa, the merengue, and the cha-cha. When Gallego was first asked to teach folklorico, she had to learn these dances and more. She studied the classical performance versions at the Anita N. Martinez Ballet Folklorico--but, since many of these dances are still done socially today, she also learned a lot from her students. "I'd ask the kids, `Who knows cumbia?' Nobody said they did. But then I'd ask one to bring me a video of their sister's quinceanera [the celebration of a girl's 15th birthday and coming of age]. I'd watch the guests dancing, find one that did the step really well, and learn it. Then I'd go back and teach it to the class, and they'd say, `Oh, I know how to do that!'" Gallego wants her students to understand that the traditional dances are still a part of today's culture. Her students learn both the basic social steps and the more formal interpretations used in folklorico performances.

El Negrito de Batey (The Negro from Batey), a carnival dance from Veracruz, is an example of how the traditional is made theatrical. The dance is based on an old style of merengue. For it, the folklorico dancer wears a beautiful white organza costume based on the authentic dress worn by the Mexican ancestors who created the dance. Gallego explains that these earlier people were poor and probably would have worn much plainer dresses without all the lace and organza that dancers of today wear. "Folklorico teachers must walk a fine line. If the dances are too authentic, they are no longer interesting to an audience. But if they are too theatrical, you are no longer true to the traditional."

Gallego and the students in Jaguara hope audiences will find their dances as informative as they are entertaining. The company does many of their performances for Molina High School, which is 85 percent Hispanic. The majority of those students have ties to Mexico. Combined with lectures, performances become tools the dancers use to educate their peers about Mexican culture. Audiences learn about everything from the origin of the costumes and music to the different cultural influences on traditional Mexican dance.

Jaguara dancers also have chances to dance outside of regular school hours. Every year, Jaguara sponsors the Folklorico Festival of North Texas, which brings Mexican performers and teachers to Dallas. Gallego founded the festival ten years ago. This past April, nearly 800 students from Mexico and across the United States traveled to Molina High School to study, perform, and compete for trophies, scholarships, and cash prizes. Silvia Lozano, founder and director of the Ballet Folclorico Nacional de Mexico, was the guest of honor. Lozano's company is one of Mexico's most celebrated.

During the summer, Gallego takes students to Mexico for the Asociacion Nacional de Grupos Folcloricos (National Association of Folklorico Groups) Conference. This year she and 16-year-old Monica Salas attended the conference in Veracruz from June 30 to July 7. "They taught us more traditional dances," says Salas, "and how to wear the costumes. It's wonderful. Everyone around you is a dancer."

Jaguara honors the beauty and diversity of the historical Hispanic culture, but it also celebrates today's artists. To bring the old and new together, Gallego will teach traditional steps to current music. During the past school year, the company performed the Argentine tango and the cha-cha to "Dance With Me" by Debelah Morgan. The students added modern steps from pop artists like Britney Spears and Usher to the work. "It actually turned out to be one of the best pieces of that particular performance," says Gallego.

Since Jaguara was founded in 1997, Gallego has created an award-winning dance company. The group, which includes girls and boys, performs twenty-five to thirty times during the school year and has danced for more than seventy community events, including eighteen for the Neighborhood Tour program sponsored by the Dallas Office of Cultural Affairs. The Texas Education Agency selected Jaguara for Portraits in Excellence, a video on the fine arts in Texas schools. Gallego has also been recognized as the 2000-2001 Dance Educator of the Year by the Texas Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance.

But to Gallego, success is about more than just awards and dance steps. Molina High School students come from a neighborhood with the third-highest incidence of teen pregnancy and number of juvenile offenders in Dallas County. About 65 percent of the students come from low-income homes. Gallego says that nationally only 4 percent of Hispanics attend college, so she uses Jaguara to encourage students to reach for a better life. In order to perform, company dancers must make good grades and get to class on time.

"We know that if we don't make the grades, we don't dance," says Salas. And dancing folklorico is very important to her. Not only has it taught Salas about her culture, it has given her the confidence to get involved in other school activities. Now she hopes to attend Texas Woman's University and is thinking about becoming a lawyer. Rodriguez also plans on attending college, and wants to be a pediatrician. With the encouragement of Gallego and their experiences in Jaguara, both dancers have learned they can accomplish anything they set their minds to.

Amanda Rittenhouse is a freelance writer in New Orleans, Louisiana.