O.C. MUSIC AND DANCE : Troupe Born to Lend Truth to Former Lie

Tina Ramirez says she founded Ballet Hispanico of New York in 1970 when she discovered that she was lying to her dance students.

She had been training Latino children in dance for about 5 years, goading them with criticism of what was “professional behavior” and what wasn’t, when a group of 13-year-old students told her that they wanted to be professional dancers.

“I looked around and saw that I was leading them on the wrong path,” Ramirez said in a recent phone interview from New York. “I had lied to them. There was no place they were going to be hired.

“They were exotic-looking, Hispanic-looking, beautiful girls and men. (But) people were not hiring Hispanics then, at all.

“I went a little crazy. . . . That’s when I decided I had to form a company so they could find employment.”

The New York State Council of the Arts helped by giving her $18,000 in seed money to form Ballet Hispanico, and Ramirez and her new company embarked on a trial by fire.

“We started to work in hospitals and drug centers,” she said. “They (also) spoke to me about a 2-week engagement doing street theater.

“We worked every street in New York, Brooklyn and the Bronx, and I say it with pride, we did two shows a day. . . .

“Street theater was difficult. The dancers learned immediately. If they didn’t, retribution was at hand. You couldn’t bore people at all. There was no boredom there.”

The 2 weeks stretched into 5 “because we were a great hit.”

Now, the company, which will appear at Plummer Auditorium in Fullerton on Saturday, has grown up.

The budget has reached $1 million. Ramirez’s school includes more than 1,000 students. Her 12 dancers have appeared across the country and are scheduled to go to Spain for the first time in July.

But Ramirez’s vision remains the same: to give Latinos a “voice in the art of dance.”

“People growing up (in New York) didn’t have any image of themselves as dancers at all or of what they could do,” she said. “We had no voice in the art of dance. . . .

“But now we have given a lot of opportunity to Hispanics and to the general population, to any people who want to dance.”

In naming her company, Ramirez said that she chose the word Hispanic because she felt that “anyone who speaks Spanish should be represented” by the company.

“The Hispanic world is enormous,” she said. “But there must be unity. There are different things that bind us: the language, the religion, love of family, love of home, love of dance. That’s very important.”

Still, the name of the company has caused some confused expectations.

“We are not a point (ballet) company,” she said. “I feel that is something that throws people off. Ballet in Spanish means any type of dance that has a story line. Never did I think people would think we were a ballet company. Never did I think it was a folkloric company.

“We are a contemporary dance company. I use ballet, I use modern and I use ethnic dance, but to form a (new) language.

“I use Hispanic music and Hispanic themes, and New York themes because, after all, we are from New York.”

Works on the program at Plummer Auditorium include Graciela Daniele’s “Cada Noche . . . Tango,” Talley Beatty’s “Tres Cantos” and Vicente Nebrada’s “Batucada Fantastica.”

“I have always had guest choreographers,” Ramirez said. “I never saw it as a company for my choreography. I always saw it as a repertory company.”

All three works embody a Ramirez principle, however.

“I feel dance is drama,” she said. “Nothing is abstract, even when you think you’re doing abstract (dance). It comes from something. It doesn’t come from empty, but from feeling.

“I tell my dancers, ‘If you do a feeling, it better be a strong feeling, a specific feeling.’

“If the dancers feel it, the audience feels it. . . . What I like is dance drama that makes a statement.”

Among obstacles Ramirez had to overcome initially was some people’s feeling that she was providing social welfare work for the Latino community more than artistic values.

“Even when people were criticizing me--that it was social--I was getting my work done because I was teaching dance and creating professionals,” she said.

“Sometimes when you have a community group, people sometimes equate ‘community’ with bad art, and that is not true for us.

“We have less money to do the arts, and art is expensive,” which is the reason Ballet Hispanico will be dancing to tapes on Saturday rather than live musicians.

“What happens is that it takes you longer to get the work done. But there is a strength also in having the community behind me.”

Ballet Hispanico of New York will dance at 8 p.m. Saturday at Plummer Auditorium, 201 E. Chapman Ave., Fullerton. Works include Graciela Daniele’s “Cada Noche . . Tango , “ Vicente Nebrada’s “Batucada Fantastica” and Talley Beatty’s “Tres Cantos.” The event is sponsored by Cal State Fullerton. Tickets: $10 to $15. Information: (714) 773-3371.