Ballet Folklorico’s New Producers Have Big Ideas

It’s a plum gig--producing the first U.S. tour in a decade of the original Ballet Folklorico de Mexico--as the latter-day Barnum and Bailey who’ve landed the job know. And have they got a show for you: It opens tonight in the Shrine Auditorium.

Legendary impresario Sol Hurok guided Amalia Hernandez and her company here for 20 years. When he died in 1979, Ballet Folklorico stopped touring the United States, although it continued to perform elsewhere around the globe.

Co-producers Adam Friedson of Los Angeles and Julio Solorzano of Mexico City came on board to handle the current tour after Hernandez “tested” them last year with the company’s limited engagement in Shrine Auditorium.

Now Friedson, a presenter with a long-term interest in U.S.-Latin America exchanges, and Solorzano, a singer-songwriter and entrepreneur whom Friedson describes as “the Sol Hurok of Mexico,” have a four-year contract with Hernandez.

“Here are two guys trying to find out the right people to host or produce with us in all of these cities--many of which I’ve never been to, much less has Julio been to--that’s the risky side,” says the modest but jocular Friedson.

“The secure side is we have the most important folkloric dance company in the hemisphere, one of the two greatest in the world, with the Moiseyev.”

Founded by Hernandez in 1952 and long an official cultural representative of the Mexican government, the 400-strong Ballet Folklorico now operates under the auspices of the National Institute of Fine Arts.

The company has inspired countless clones, both here and in Mexico. At home it boasts a resident troupe--directed by Hernandez’s daughter Norma Lopez Hernandez--and a school, in addition to the 65-member touring contingent.

This year Friedson and Solorzano are taking the company to 33 Western cities plus Chicago in seven weeks. And they’re doing it with only a partial sponsorship from Honda, counting on the box office to make up most of the $4 million in costs.

Still, the odds are better than those they faced the first time out. “Last year we had no sponsorship at all,” Friedson recalls. “I’d never done one performance of a ballet, let alone four performances at the Shrine Auditorium with 6,300 seats.”

To make it worse, they’d been promised $250,000 in sponsorship from Spanish-language media that fell through at the last minute. Three weeks before the show, the producers had no underwriting and $50,000 in debts.

The Ballet Folklorico is “country, flag, mother and apple pie,” Friedson says. “As Julio likes to say, this is the Virgin de Guadalupe, but even that wasn’t going to fill the Shrine.”

“We just did everything we could think of and we had three full houses and one half house and it was a success. We had $300,000 in gross expenses for four shows, with a 10% profit.”

Now that the stakes are greater, people have cautioned the daring duo about the scale of their ambitions. “The only reason we’ve tried it is because we didn’t know better,” Friedson adds.

They’re taking it on partly because they feel the support is there: “We knew the marketplace has changed in the United States. There are many more Latins who’re more successful economically.”

For Hernandez, it means the pleasure of returning to a country in which, she says, “things are easier.”

“We are well recognized here and the dancers love it because we are so close (to Mexico).”

Both Hernandez and her producers hope to see the Ballet Folklorico become as well-known in the United States as it is in Mexico, especially as 1992 approaches.

“1992 is a very important year for Latin American culture, because it’s the 500th anniversary of the discovery of the Americas,” says Solorzano. “Also, it’s the 40th anniversary of the Ballet Folklorico.”

They want to appeal to a “crossover” audience, not just those of Latino heritage, they say.

“Mexican art is perceived as interesting only for Mexicans or Mexican-Americans and this is something we have to fight,” Solorzano explains. “You wouldn’t think a Russian company would be appealing only for the Russian and Ukrainians of New York.”

Mogul-like as they may be, this is a team for whom the bottom line isn’t the bottom line. As Friedson explains, “Julio and I both committed to cultural literacy. We’re going to do a lot of things that are not about making a profit.”

“We want to make available to underprivileged children their own culture, so we put together a free show for 3,000 Hispanic kids who are hosting black, Asian and Anglo children at the Shrine on Friday,” Friedson says.

“It’s easier to get kids from different cultures together than it is to get adults from different cultures together,” Solorzano adds.