Culture Club Ballet Hispanico’s celebration of life BY JOHNETTE RODRIGUEZ

The New York-based dance company Ballet Hispanico is a child of the late ’60s that survived the economic vagaries of the ’90s and is flourishing in 2004. The company will bring one of its newest pieces, NightClub, to Rhode Island College on September 21.

Since its formation in 1970, Ballet Hispanico has appeared across the country, all over Europe (from Zurich to Barcelona to Spoleto), and up and down the South American continent. Artistic director Tina Ramirez, daughter of a Mexican bullfighter and a Puerto Rican educator, came to the States as a young child and, though she always loved to dance, she didn’t begin her formal training in Spanish dance and ballet until she was 13. She toured for a while in the ’60s with a Spanish dance troupe but came back to New York to take over her Spanish dance teacher’s studio in 1963 and started a professional dance program for children in 1967.

"My family was always very socially-minded," Ramirez remembers, in a phone conversation this week from her studio in New York. "I always loved to dance and I wanted to pass it along. During the turbulent times of the late ’60s and early ’70s, I heard kids saying, ‘I’m Puerto Rican’ or ‘I’m Dominican,’ but they didn’t know that Spanish came from Spain. When I was growing up, I knew that, but now it was getting lost.

"I was already teaching and I had students who wanted to become professional dancers," she continues, "so I said, ‘Well, why not?’ I put in an application to the New York State Council on the Arts in 1970 and got $18,000, and that was the only thing I needed to get me started."

Ramirez has never looked back. Ballet Hispanico’s current repertoire (from a wide range of choreographers) includes pieces about Mexico’s history and landscape (Eternamente y un Dia); about the first waves of Cuban immigration in the ’20s and ’30s (Club Havana); about Cuban workers and their evening parties, danced to a particular rhythm whose origins are in Africa and Spain, that of the guajira, for which the ballet is named; an urban dance (Ritmo y Ruido) by Ann Reinking that’s set to the percussive beats of hip-hop and Afro-Cuban drums; and a ballet about the blind Spanish composer Joaquín Rodrigo’s struggle to create his art (Eyes of the Soul).

Ramirez recognized the wealth of possibilities for her company in all the differences among the many Hispanic cultures — "There’s such great history and it’s so dramatic" — but she also began to think about some similarities. "Latins, when we celebrate, we dance. We always dance. And I always have pieces about our dancing." So when someone suggested that she put some of those together into a full-length program, NightClub was born.

"I had the Cada Noche Tango since 1988," Ramirez explains. "It is based on Jorge Luis Borges’s early stories, which were very well-known in Latin America, and Graciele Daniele choreographed it, and it has that fabulous music by Astor Piazzola."

Cada Noche forms the first act of NightClub, set in the ’20s, when the bordello provided entertainment for both men and women, because they went there to dance the tango and, if the women were lucky, they might make some extra money for themselves.

"It’s about the treatment of women," Ramirez reflects. "There’s a beautiful trio preceded by a rape scene. If you want things to change, you have to show what it is so that people understand it, because cruelty to women is still being perpetrated, even as we speak."

The second act, Dejame Solar, choreographed by Alexandre Magno to classic Latin songs, such as those by Tito Puente, is set in the ’50s, a time when Puerto Ricans were immigrating to the States in great numbers and women were working alongside men.

"Still and all, they were not equal," notes Ramirez. "But at least things were changing. But we’ve come a long way. Today you go to a social club and anything goes. Women are more in control. You might see men dancing with men and women with women, as well as men with women."

Thus, the third act of NightClub, titled Hoy Como Ayer and choreographed by Sergio Trujillo, is set in the present day to the music of contemporary Hispanic DJs. The 80-minute program requires the 13 dancers to make lightning-swift costume changes for the three different acts, but in Ramirez’s words, "People are very excited about it, and they all seem to have a good time.

"We have very strong dancers, because we tell a story when we are dancing," she emphasizes. "They have to be very well-trained in ballet, modern and ethnic dance, plus they have to be very good actors. And they are very grounded in Hispanic culture. Everything we do has to do with Hispanic culture."

With the rise in interest over the past decade in Hispanic music and film, as well as traditional Spanish dances, Ballet Hispanico’s fusion of ballet, modern, and Latin dance forms is sure to hit home with Providence audiences.

Ballet Hispanico will perform on Tuesday, September 21 at 8 p.m. at the Auditorium in Roberts Hall at Rhode Island College, 600 Mt. Pleasant Avenue, Providence. Call (401) 456-8144.