FELINE FOLKLORE : Mexico’s Esteemed Ballet Folklorico Returns to Orange County With a Tiger and a Tale

Even when seeking to please ancient spirits, things go better with Coke. At least that’s how certain modern day Mexicans see things, says the country’s doyenne of dance, Amalia Hernandez.

Founder, director and choreographer of the venerable Ballet Folklorico de Mexico, Hernandez learned about the cola offering while researching her newest dance, “The Olmecs.” Her troupe, touring the nation with 65 dancers and musicians, will present that work and others at the Orange County Performing Arts Center on Wednesday in a performance that marks the troupe’s return to the county after a 15-year absence.

Legend has it that the Olmec Indians, thought to be the earliest civilization in the Americas, revered the tiger, Hernandez said. She visited Tenosique, in Southern Mexico, where an old man told her that villagers still break into the pocho (tiger) dance when the animal’s spirit rises from “the river of the old Olmecs.”

“The old man said it is very dangerous if you don’t do the dance, because you have to please the tiger, and (to do that), after the dance, they give him a Coca-Cola,” she said in a recent interview at a Los Angeles hotel.

Neither man nor beast sips soda in “The Olmecs.” But company members perform a ceremonial adoration of a tiger, personified by a fellow dancer costumed as the striped feline. Taped musical accompaniment is based on drum and flute rhythms from Colombia.

To choreograph the piece, Hernandez, 75, read volumes about the Olmecs, believed to have thrived some 3,000 years ago.

“It impressed me so much that all the anthropologists say that this was the origin of life in Latin America,” she said. “The Aztecs, the Mayans, the Incas in Peru, all were descendants of the Olmecs.”

She also visited their ancient temples, she said, and carefully studied Olmec jade figurines and the pocho dance performed in Tenosique, a key source for the movements she eventually devised.

In sum, she used the same process as in 41 other ballets she has crafted for the troupe, known for brilliantly costumed dance spectacles that depict ancient Mayan or Aztec rituals, Revolutionary Mexico or myriad regional festivals, and illuminate Mexico’s diverse ethnic makeup with steps influenced by European, African, Middle Eastern and Asian cultures.

“I study as much as possible about a culture . . . to retain the power and the essence and the vitality of the authentic folklore,” Hernandez said, adding that she nonetheless strives for a larger-than-life sense of excitement and theatricality.

“I use the modern techniques of choreography, design, scenery, lights and costumes because you have to produce an art that you can transmit to the public. You create a power from the stage, and a power from the public, and this is success.”

Long an official cultural representative of Mexico, Ballet Folklorico celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. Hernandez, whose commanding profile has softened with time, admits to fatigue from a demanding touring schedule that includes the United States, Europe and Japan. But she doesn’t intend to set a retirement date--heaven will have to take her first, she says--and said positive public response keeps her going strong.

“I feel very happy when I see the audience coming in sad and gloomy and going out dancing and jumping. That makes me very, very happy.”