DOWNTOWN : They’re in Step With a Dream

Rosa Valadez, 16, sat quietly, catching her breath. She had just spent two hours twirling in classic ballet style and then stomping spiritedly to Mexican folklorico music, all under the watchful eyes of her idols, members of the Los Angeles Mexican Dance Company.

“I’ve been dancing seven years and I’ve loved dancing since I was small,” said the Cudahy teen-ager, one of 18 young men and women who recently came from all over the county to audition for the dance company.

Like Valadez, most of the hopefuls were drawn by an announcement on a Spanish-language TV station. The candidates ranged in age from 12 to nearly 30 and most had no dance experience beyond traditional Mexican folk dancing. But they all shared the dream of being a professional dancer.

At the company’s studio on the second floor of a downtown warehouse, the hopefuls struggled to point their toes as gracefully as their instructor, company veteran Blanca Martinez, and tried valiantly to shuffle across the floor in choreographed unison. With an almost audible sigh of relief, they finally donned hard shoes to dance the more familiar folklorico steps.

At the end of the audition, none of the hopefuls had been immediately accepted into the company. But Carola de la Rocha, founder of the company, invited them all to take classes in the academy, at little or no cost, to work up to acceptance into the company.

“We don’t turn anybody away. The auditions are partly to entice them to come to us,” said De la Rocha, who started the nonprofit 20-member dance company and Los Angeles Metropolitan Performing Arts Academy four years ago to give low-income youths, particularly Latinos, a chance to pursue dance careers.

“Through the process, they will see not only that we have high-caliber dancers, they realize they can do it too.”

Like most of those at the audition, De la Rocha dreamed as a child of becoming a member of a major troupe. Though money and opportunities for training are scarce for a child growing up in Lincoln Heights, De la Rocha eventually became a member of the Mexico City-based Ballet Folklorico.

After a few years with the Mexican troupe, De la Rocha returned to Lincoln Heights in 1988 and pursued her desire to help other young people “with the same goals, dreams and aspirations, but no direction.” She started the academy in an old Lincoln Heights ballroom, pouring her savings and her heart into teaching classical ballet, and contemporary and Mexican folk dance.

Students, from 5-year-olds to adults, pay $7 per class; those who can’t afford it pay nothing. All De la Rocha asks is a commitment to dance, which includes an average of 25 hours a week of class and rehearsals.

Those who reach a certain caliber become members of the company, which performs stylized Mexican ballet at local events and has appeared on local TV shows.

Several company members have gone on to join Ballet Folklorico, the National Cuba Ballet Company and other professional groups, or received scholarships to further their study. Students are thus exposed to the arts, other cultures and educational opportunities, and they develop self-esteem, De la Rocha said.

Claudia Lopez, one of the company’s principal dancers, recently completed a modern-dance course with Loretta Livingston & Dancers on a full scholarship. But Lopez giggled with embarrassment at the memory of her first audition before De la Rocha just two years ago.

“I didn’t know what I was doing,” said Lopez, 21, of Montebello. “I didn’t know about pointing my feet or anything. I’ve always enjoyed dancing, ever since I was a little girl. But dance classes were always hard for my family because that was a luxury.”

Most of those at the recent audition were invited to the academy’s beginner courses, but Valadez and three others were singled out as potential company members and encouraged to seriously train.

“We believe you young people can really make the company work,” De la Rocha told the four. “You can all do it--but you have to study.”