Amalia Hernández, the revolutionary Mexican dance pioneer, gets a Google Doodle salute
She would have been 100 today
Adapted from a story by The Washington Post’s Michael Cavna.
Google is celebrating Amalia Hernández — the pioneering dancer and choreographer who founded Ballet Folklórico de México — with the brilliant colors of movement in a homepage Doodle.
Hernández, who died in 2000, would have been 100 today.
The legendary dancer was born into a wealthy Mexican family in 1917. She received formal ballet training at her home in Mexico City, and when she was eight, she decided to dedicate her life to dance. Hernández was disciplined, but she couldn’t fully express herself with ballet.
Hernández moved on to modern dance, which she taught at the Fine Arts National Institute, as well as Spanish flamenco. Yet for her, their formality did not yield deep artistic fertility.
Her journey to represent Mexican culture through dance began as she explored her country. She moved from coastlines to the mountain ridgelines.
Through travel, she found indigenous connection. Her inspired emotional ties led her to weave the fabric of Mexican folk dance with the tight threads of her formal training. The resulting artistic tapestry was her new dance style: baile folklorico.
In 1952, with just eight dancers, Hernández founded the Ballet Folklórico de México. Two years later, they kicked off their national TV broadcasts, which spawned North American tours that would begin to make Hernández a cultural ambassador to the world. By the end of the decade, now on the path to international prominence, they would represent Mexico in the Pan American Games, and then at the Paris Festival of Nations in the next decade.
Ballet Folklórico became more than a company; it was an artistic movement. Tens of thousands of students are said to have studied at its school at the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City.
Although some suggested that Hernández unnecessarily tampered with certain folkloric traditions, she was steadfast in her dedication to the culture.
“I am a perfectionist,” she told the Los Angeles Times in 1997. “I have worked harder than you can imagine to keep the authentic style, the essence, in everything.”
