A Few Steps Closer to His Dream

Arturo Mendoza arrived in Santa Ana seven years ago, a young visitor from Mexico on a trip to explore unknown territory with a friend. His friend eventually went home but Mendoza decided to stay. He was barely out of his teens at the time, a good age to dream.

Mendoza didn’t fit the typical immigrant profile.

He had no family in the United States, but he did have a college education and an agronomist’s degree. He didn’t come here looking for work; he already had a government job in his field.

But Mendoza found a mission here. He found a place where he could help youngsters develop the talent awakened in himself as a boy in his native Guanajuato, where he’d watch in amazement as his grandfather performed almost extinct folkloric dance portrayals of colonial conflicts, complete with real knives and masks of death.

Mendoza remained in America to share his passion for Mexican dance, or folklorico. He saw a great need here for trained instructors and he saw the chance to turn his love for the dance into a vocation.

His dream was to establish a casa de cultura in Santa Ana, a cultural center like those found in many Mexican cities and towns where people can take lessons in popular dance, music and art. He wanted to be like those five excellent dance teachers who had trained him for free at such government-sponsored “houses of culture” since he was 15.

Mendoza ached to teach the dances of Mexico, so colorful, expressive and varied from region to region.

At first, he was willing to give his knowledge away. He wanted young people to learn and preserve these old traditions. But he also wanted them to absorb the benefits of dancing that others can’t readily see.

The discipline that strengthens their character. The knowledge that deepens their respect for society. The teamwork that encourages them to support each other.

“I don’t want it to be a class,” said the soft-spoken Mendoza, who answers questions in polished Spanish as if reading from a book. “I want it to be a form of personal enrichment. Something they can carry with them forever, and pass it on to the next generation.”

A week from today, the public will be able to enjoy the fruits of Mendoza’s labor in Orange County. His students will be performing at Santa Ana High School during an evening of song and dance dubbed Noche de Cultura Mexicana. The show will feature two groups currently under Mendoza’s tutelage: the high school’s 39-member dance troupe and the Folklorico Xcaret, a 15-member student-and-community company that includes a few older dancers.

Mendoza came to coach aspiring dancers at the city’s oldest high school three years ago. He was invited there by Jo-Ann Silva, an English as a second language teacher who had already started a folklorico club on campus.

Silva was impressed when she first saw Mendoza teaching at another location in the city.

The class was just practicing, but they looked sharp.

“His students were like . . . “ Silva snapped her fingers with a downward stroke of her arm. “ . . . pre-cise.”

Her oldest daughter Jackie, now 11, has been studying with Mendoza ever since.

Rosa Diaz was impressed too. She was then a freshman at Santa Ana High and a member of Silva’s folklorico club. This instructor really knew how to teach, she told Silva. He was showing these little kids more than the teenagers ever learned: how to carry themselves with grace, how to keep themselves in unison.

“Mrs. Silva,” said Rosa, now 17, “can’t he come over and help us?”

When he did, Rosa soon noticed other qualities that made Mendoza stand out from other volunteer teachers. He was always on time. He was always encouraging. He never cursed or showed frustration.

“Other teachers always saw the faults in me,” remembered Rosa, during a break at practice Tuesday night. “But he would always say, ‘You have talent. You know you can do it. Just come every day and keep practicing.’ ”

Rosa, who came to this country a year before Mendoza did, blossomed under his leadership. She’s now president of the folklorico dance class and vice president of the student body.

In September, she’s headed to Allegheny College in Pennsylvania on a Fulbright scholarship.

Was dance the secret to her success? Not entirely, perhaps. But it helped build her confidence, she said. It contributed to that mature assurance evident even in her casual conversation.

Some dance instructors play favorites with their better students, said Mendoza. They dream of forming large, well-known troupes. So they gravitate toward the obviously talented and ignore the rest.

“To me, they’re all talented,” he said. “I don’t see pretty faces. I see only the potential to dance. Little ones, fat ones, skinny ones, sad ones. The differences don’t matter, I can have them all dancing.”

It’s not magic. It’s hard work. “If they want to do it, they will,” he said. “If they don’t, they will leave. . . . But they have got to struggle. I don’t give them anything easy.”

It hasn’t come easy for him, either. For a while he was holding down two jobs. A couple times a week he’d clean stores, like Sav-On, after closing until 2 a.m. He had to be at his regular job by 7 the next morning, preparing to cook at El Pollo Loco.

He’d get off at 3 p.m., then head to the high school to teach the folklorico club every evening, Monday through Friday. The first couple years, he did it for free. His two roommates couldn’t believe his largess.

“In Mexico, I was taught that not everything one has to offer should have a price,” he said.

Mendoza now gets paid as a walk-on coach at the high school. He recently quit the chicken-grilling gig and spends his mornings taking typing class and English as a second language at an adult school. In the afternoons, he teaches the dance course, offered for credit this year for the first time at the high school.

Mendoza doesn’t fit the typical profile of a dancer, either. He’s not thin and sinewy; he looks round and soft. During most of the rehearsal I saw this week, he stood stiffly in front of his students, his arms folded or held motionless at his sides.

But his eyes were alert as an eagle’s, watching for what the public doesn’t see. The way the girls flutter their flowing skirts; the way the boys point the toes of their boots.

And when he finally joined them to demonstrate the steps, he seemed to float across the floor as if on ice, his upper body held steady while his feet propelled him and marked time.

I loved just watching the kids in his classes, all sizes and ages. The girls had sweet faces and long braids down their backs. The boys worked earnestly to perfect their rapid-fire footwork, seductive attitudes and macho swagger. Their team precision was critical during one scary number, from the state of Nayarit, in which they each held two machetes and clanged them together like swordsmen with rhythm, jumping and twirling all the while.

It was dark when Jo-Ann Silva and I stepped outside of the practice room. The night was cool on the tranquil campus and cars breezed silently along First Street, visible across the lawn and playing fields.

Silva said she started the dance club to inspire kids to stay in school. Immigrants can too easily feel left out. The folklorico can help them feel at home again.

“This is actually, for me, my dropout prevention,” said Silva, daughter of a barber from the nearby Logan barrio and Santa Ana High alumna.

As we stood there, I remembered covering a gang shooting at the corner by the mini-mart a few years ago. Pandemonium engulfed the campus that afternoon when one kid was killed. Now, those days of violence seemed so distant.

An inviting light glowed from the practice room where Mendoza was drilling his students. Their joy in dance was punctuated by the firecracker sound of their synchronized foot-stomping.

Occasionally, an older student named Miguel shouted an exuberant “Hey!”

Hats off, maestro Mendoza!

Agustin Gurza’s column appears Tuesday and Saturday. Readers can reach Gurza at (714) 966-7712 or agustin.gurza@latimes.com.