Culture club

Senior Fernando Herrera remembers the smiling faces that looked up at him after ending the performance at the Scottish Rite Hospital for Children.

Last year, the Latino Club folklorico dancers were able to perform for kids with disabilities and interact with them. As they were leaving, the members of the dance group got a surprise when a small girl approached them.

“I remember towards the end when we were about to leave this little girl wanted an autograph of all of us,” Herrera said. “We all gave her our autographs and I thought it was really cute. We were able to put smiles on their faces.”

Latino Club performs all around the area, going to different elementary and middle schools to showcase a traditional Mexican dance.

But on Friday, May 1, the long flowing skirts and booming claps of tap-like shoes will echo in Stuver Auditorium as the Latino Club presents the Cinco De Mayo Celebration. The event is open to the public free of charge, starting at 7 p.m.

Latino Club co-sponsor Isabel Ramirez gave details on the preparations being made for their upcoming show.

“We are going to ask some people if they want to sing, or if they want to do some modern dances,” Ramirez said. “It’s going to start off with the folklorico dances and then we usually have an intermission and then the modern stuff usually comes after that. If we have any costume changes or anything like that we can usually incorporate it into that.”

The official date of Cinco De Mayo is May 5, but the celebration will be held on Friday so parents and students have a better chance of showing up. The show will be about two hours long depending on the other performers and costume changes.

“We would like to get as many people there as possible,” Ramirez said. “Just enjoy it and have fun, it is sort of our big show case. That is the time we actually get to perform on our home campus for our parents, family.”

The Latino Club has faced some challenges this year in getting students involved in the group. Ramirez estimated that there are 12-15 members currently.

“We start off really big at the beginning of the year and then people just get really busy,” Ramirez said. “Especially for juniors, because junior year tends to be very taxing on time.”

Other obstacles for the club include the separation between the three campuses that makes it harder for underclassmen to join.

“We almost have to start from the ground up every year,” Ramirez said. “Time constraints. Mostly I have students who want to participate but who are either working or trying to finish their graduation requirements.”

Although Latino Club has found it difficult to acquire members it has been going strong for “probably at least 10 years, if not longer,” according to Ramirez. The purpose of the club is to promote culture.

“We wanted an outlet for students, Hispanic students, to have some involvement in the school and in the community,” Ramirez said. “And we also wanted to demonstrate and educate about the Latino culture, but also offer a really positive role model for Latinos in the community.”

Seniors Krystalynn Moreno, Nathaniel Pierce, Hailey Bishop and Fernando Herrera are among some of those students dancing for Latino Club. Coming from different cultures they had differing views on why they joined Latino Club.

“I think it gives the Hispanic community a positive more respectable look,” Moreno said. “People look at our culture a different way. They see how the Latino community can come together and embrace their culture.”

Pierce, a senior and dancer for Latino Club, said he loves to embrace his Hispanic side while being able to enjoy himself.

“It’s neat for me to be able to embrace one side of my culture and to learn more about it,” Pierce said. “I feel like when I dance I can show other people my culture and be able to give it off in a positive way.”

Despite being a time consuming activity, dancing in Latino Club has been the biggest encouragement for Bishop to explore new boundaries and try new activities.

“Well obviously I’m not Latina,” Bishop said. “But I joined because I wanted to embrace the culture that it offered for me to learn about, and the dancing is also a plus side, because I get to learn a bunch of cool dances that I’ve never seen before.”

Herrera said he joined in part because he had taken an interest in the traditional dancing while visiting family in Mexico.

“I remember watching [Latino Club] perform in the pep rally my sophomore year,” Herrera said. “And I thought, ‘That’s pretty cool.’ I knew what the dances were, but I never really knew what they were called. It’s another way to embrace my culture since that’s where I come from.”

The performance on Friday is one of the biggest performances put on by the club. Despite performing all year, they continue to seek perfection during their practices since the dances they will do are so unique and precise in style that there really is no room for error.

“It’s very traditional dancing,” Ramirez said. “It’s very specific to region states in Mexico, and not only are the dances specific, but so are the costumes.”