Latinidad + Dance: Michelle Manzanales Paves the Way for Latinx Artists
by Radhamely De Leon
Like many young performers, Michelle Manzanales once volunteered to usher at the Joyce Theater for the chance to catch a free performance. She was immediately awestruck by the beauty of the show. “I remember thinking ‘oh, my God, this is amazing,’” she says. “In that moment, I didn’t even think I would be this person one day.”
Little did she know, she would eventually choreograph an original piece to be performed at that very same theater many years later.
Manzanales premiered Con Brazos Abiertos in April with Ballet Hispánico at the Joyce, alongside pieces by fellow Latina dancers Annabelle López Ochoa and Tania Pérez-Salas. Manzanales’s choreography sets her Mexican-American heritage at center stage, receiving standing ovations and glowing reviews since opening night. This journey has been both “thrilling and terrifying,” she says.
With songs ranging from the haunting ‘¿Que es Ahora?’ by Carla Morrison to more folksy tunes by Julio Iglesias and Marty Robbins, the audience is exposed to the Mexican culture. Manzanales even manages to poke fun at the difficulties of being Mexican-American by including clips from Cheech and Chong and Selena, in which Abraham Quintanilla (played by Edward James Olmos) exclaims, “We gotta be more Mexican than the Mexicans and more American than the Americans, both at the same time. It’s exhausting!”
Manzanales grew up in Houston, Texas, where she existed in an identity limbo until her dancing pushed her to explore her Latin roots. “When I was younger, I was always embarrassed by these cultural symbols,” she explains. “I took those memories about these specific things, — like the mariachis, the folk lore, the big skirts — and celebrated them through my contemporary dance voice.”
Translating the Latino identity through dance has been Ballet Hispánico’s mission since its conception in 1970. Manzanales originally joined the organization as the company’s rehearsal director for seven seasons.
She became director of the School of Dance in December 2016, and has since thrived at the helm of the flourishing school. Manzanales, now 42, knows the difficulties of up and coming dance students well. She began dancing at the age of three at a small studio in Texas and was teaching her own class there by the time she was 17. “I feel like once I started dancing I just felt like it wasn’t a question that it was supposed to be a part of my life,” she says, adding that she hopes to instill the same drive to pursue what you love in the students of Ballet Hispánico.
Opportunities to showcase or witness Latina talent remain rare — making this season at the Joyce hugely significant. Manzanales, as a Latina artist, is used to being seen as “lesser”. She shared a comment about a past performance at the Joyce Theater. “[A guy said] ‘You guys are really great for a Hispanic company.’”
This does not keep her from looking towards the future. After such an exciting time of choreographing Con Brazos Abiertos, Manzanales is more than happy to settle down as the School of Dance director. “I look forward to launching ChoreoLaB, a brand new program I had the honor of designing for emerging young professional dancers this summer at Ballet Hispánico,” she says. “But I am most excited to begin my first full [school] year as the school director at BH.”
Their School of Dance pre-professional students will be performing at Summer Sundays, a series of block parties held by the Community League of the Heights, on June 25th. There are many plans in store to bind Ballet Hispánico to its local and international community as a Latino dance company. As Manzanales stated, “Ballet Hispánico is about celebrating our heritage, our past, but also celebrating our culture through a contemporary lens.”
