Future Vision Marks Mexico Jazz Congress - Second National Jazz Dance Congress held - Brief Article

Dance Magazine, August, 2000 by Kristen Smith

THE BASS is loud and insistent, vibrating through the wood floor. Fifty dancers squeeze toward the front of the studio to get a closer look at dance instructor Ricardo Cossio's high-speed, high-energy routine.

Cossio, a short, slight 32-year-old, shouts the steps in Spanish as he demonstrates. "Step! Step! Pivot! Pivot! Releve! Turn! Plie!" After ten measures of steps, leaps, turns and slides, Cossio stands, hands on hips, and shouts, "Si?" The handful of professionally schooled dancers reply firmly, "Si!"

Cossio is a purist in what his countrymen regard as a sullied field. When Mexicans think of jazz, they think of the global commercialism they see as undermining their culture. But Mexico enjoys a proud tradition of jazz innovation, with teachers, performers and choreographers working at the cutting edge of jazz's fine-art realm.

"We love jazz, but we do not support commercial jazz," laments Cossio, jazz coordinator for the National Institute for Fine Arts. "It's so difficult." He sees companies fail, serious dancers whose careers stall and bureaucrats who insist on meddling in publicly financed dance programs.

Cossio and others like him are struggling to turn jazz dance's image problem around. This spring, he and some of Mexico's best jazz instructors staged the Second National Jazz Dance Congress in Morelia, Michoacan. They offered dancers from the nation's best academies top-rate classes and nightly performances. The hope is that a new generation of intelligently trained dancers will develop better quality jazz in Mexico and an improved public image. And better jazz, these visionaries hope, will mean more jazz jobs.

As it is, employment is scarce and career troubles abound. "We'd been working as a company for years and yet there was still no place to work. It was difficult to obtain financial support," says Barbara Luna, 27, who organized the congress with longtime friend Eli Solis. "So you're stuck with the frustration of training and working with no opportunities before you," adds Luna, who is both artistic director and choreographer of the Guadalajara, Mexico, troupe Ikal-U Danza.

Solis found his own dance career stalled from the beginning. Growing up in Morelia, he discovered a dance form that had nearly faded into oblivion. "There was no dance, only classes and studios filled with elderly teachers," he says. "When I saw there was nothing more for me here I went to Mexico City, then to the U.S. When I returned to Morelia, I asked myself, `What do I do now? Do I stay or do I go?' I decided to stay, but not without accomplishing a few things." Solis went on to open his own studio, Jazz Up, but he says it was like laying bricks: "One month at a time, one barre at a time, one mirror at a time."

When Luna and Solis sought financial assistance for this year's congress, the Michoacan branch of the National Institute for Fine Arts would give money only if the congress was run under the auspices of the Mexican government.

Despite all the complaints of Mexican jazz dance professionals, there are those who say the Mexican jazz scene compares favorably with that of the United States. Native San Diegan James Kelly, 38, recently was hired as a resident choreographer by a local company to create jazz, modern and ballet dances.

"This job at the ballet company--which is twelve months' salary, two months' paid vacation, two physical therapists, a doctor, our performance space at Palacio de Bellas Artes, working with a symphony orchestra, having costumers, lighting designers, sound technicians--it's like being in heaven compared to what I lived before," he said. Kelly had his own company in Chicago, the James Kelly Choreography Project, where he mixed jazz with ballet. "I never earned one cent," he said. "I taught ballet, I worked at Kinko's, I did everything except have a salary as artistic director of a company."

There were, however, signs of progress at the congress. When Ikal-U Danza performed Desviaciones de una Vida Informal (Deviations From an Informal Life) midweek, the national half-hour news program Hechos brought a crew and spokeswoman to record the show and conduct interviews.

Solis could feel proud as the dancers worked out in his studios and lounged in his hallways. This is the second year the congress has been held there. Next year it may have to move to Mexico City, because attendance doubled this year from 50 to 100. Cossio, meanwhile, has made inroads at the National Institute for Fine Arts, where he took a full-time job. He goes where needed, teaching at jazz festivals and studios. And wherever he goes he has a message.

"Where is the animal in you?" he asks his students. "You've got to feel it everywhere! You've got to dance with everything!" He waits, then shouts, "Si?" This time everyone shouts in unison: "Si!" And the floor thunders as fifty young men and women stampede across it, again.