A moving force: in the country's biggest minority, Latino artists fight stereotypes that blur their artistry and their diversity

Dance Magazine, June, 2005 by Guillermo Perez

Torres, too, has dealt with historical prejudices in her mission to authenticate Afro-Cuban traditions. "My art is that of a minority within a minority," she says. "I have to work tirelessly to disseminate my kind of dance. It can still raise the eyebrows of those afflicted with colonialist taboos."

Thevenot gravitated toward the non-linear, charged imagery of butoh; she has trained in Japan and under Mexican butoh master Diego Pinon. A work such as her Xochitl ("the rose piece" in the Nahuatl language), an exploration of beauty that turns poisonous, exemplifies a connection to nature that runs to Thevenot's roots.

Octavio Campos recognized a different kind of kinship in his piece Patch M at the Florida Dance Festival three years ago. As he assumed a meditative stance in the solo, his Cuban grandmother came up to the stage, bringing him ethnic remedies for a troubled soul: pastries and soup. He had just returned to Miami from a stay in Germany, where he had established a respectable career. But he longed "to feel the Latino thing again--the calor, that warmth and realness of touch, of family."

Ironically, Campos had to flee from parental constraints at the start of his arts education. "They were in complete Latino denial," he says, revealing the family's rejection of his commitment to art and--a significant parallel-of his sexual preference. "Now that I've paid my dues, my family has totally taken in all this locura [madness]." His mother even helped him with the Spanish text for Blue LIVE, his piece based on a Derek Jarman film about AIDS.

How family reservations can turn to an embrace also rings true for young Latinos in the 2005 BFA graduating class at Miami's New World School of the Arts. Louis Marin, a Mexican-American who grew up in San Jose, California, found little support while making his way to dance. "Coming here," he admits, "was like running away from home." At the college, however, he got to delve into Jose Limon's choreography. "I made my mom come watch me in There Is a Time. Being a religious person she could really relate to it, which was for me a very emotional experience," Marin recounts.

He and his classmates candidly acknowledge how ethnic realities affect them. They, too, identify with a special musicality and sharply inflected expression, but--without a trace of defeatism--recognize barriers. As Diana Diaz, a blond Costa Rican-American of Cuban parents, confesses about a summer intensive she took near Boston, "I felt out of it because of body type." She started out early in flamenco and faced the demands of ballet much later--though this required working against what she jokingly calls "the big butt" challenge.

Born in Queens to a Puerto Rican family, Miguel Quinones concedes, "I'd love to perform in Don Quixote or Le Corsaire but I'd have difficulty getting a job in ballet companies looking for tall Caucasian males." He believes contemporary dance is more open to both his special lyricism and the celebration of racial mix his parents instilled in him. "Being Latino drives the emotion in my work," he enthuses.