Youngsters Step Out With Show of Their Own in ‘Latino L.A.’

The “Latino L.A.” musical extravaganza under the stars at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre on Saturday night is geared toward adults, but on Saturday morning, kids get a “Latino L.A.” show of their own.

Part of the Ford’s annual Summer Nights’ “Big/World/Fun” series, the family show will feature Guatemalan, Peruvian and Mexican music and dance, produced by Gema Sandoval, founder and artistic director of Danza Floricanto/USA.

Children from three local dance troupes will perform colorful traditional dances: Grupo Cultural Latinoamericano will celebrate a Guatemalan harvest tradition; children from the Los Angeles affiliate of Club Libertad de Trujillo will perform the Peruvian marinera, and boys and girls of Folklorico de Sierra Park Elementary in El Sereno will show the dexterity and discipline that has made them seasoned public performers in a pair of dances from Mexico.

Providing music for the dancers will be Mexico’s world-renowned folk musicians, Los Folkloristas, who also are performing Saturday evening. But Sandoval is delighted that young audiences will see children in the spotlight too.

“I want the kids to really feel a connection to the performers--children performing for children,” Sandoval said.

Club Libertad’s performers have competed not only regionally and nationally in marinera contests, but also in Peru. The contests, Sandoval explained, are the way that the traditional dance form is kept alive and passed on. “They have contests throughout the United States wherever there is a Peruvian community and then send them to Peru, and they compete there.”

Grupo Cultural Latinoamericano was formed in the local Guatemalan community “that has just begun to put forth its cultural traditions,” she said. While not professionals, “you can see the love for their work.

“I wanted to have a gamut of performance,” she added, “so that every child can feel, ‘I would like to do that.’ At the same time, they [can feel] that ‘this is here in my backyard, therefore it belongs to me’--it may be Guatemalan, for instance, but it’s also American.”

Sandoval discovered Folklorico de Sierra Park Elementary--”this little jewel”--near El Sereno Middle School, where her own company was born 25 years ago. The children, mostly third-, fourth- and fifth-graders, learn the intricate dances of Mexico from teacher and former dancer Felix Salcedo.

“When I went to audition them for the show,” Sandoval said, “they were so very proper and well-behaved. These children are performers, there’s no question about it. They are lovely.”

“Children respond [to learning the dances] very much like when they’re in a Little League team,” Salcedo said. “It’s a team effort, we have goals we work toward, and the children come to practice. It’s a discipline, [but they] have to enjoy it because it’s a lot of work, and they have to be able to put in all those hours of practice.”

Salcedo has been teaching young children the adult traditional dances--involving complicated footwork and subtle, swirling “skirt-work”--since 1984. He has found it both rewarding and challenging.

“I feel very passionate about this,” he said. “I devote a lot of my time so that it looks its best. It’s not simple, basic children’s movements. I have to break [the dances] down and do a lot of drills. For the most part, kids at the elementary level learn pretty much the way they learn how to read: Learn the sounds, put [them] together, begin to decode words and then work up to a sentence, a paragraph--that’s how they learn dances.”

Sandoval relates a story that attests to the interest Salcedo’s young dancers take in getting it just right.

One of Folklorico de Sierra Park Elementary’s audition pieces was the dance “Los Machetes,” which the children performed substituting sticks for real machetes. Afterward, one small dancer asked Sandoval if she makes her Danza Floricanto members use sticks.

“He asked, ‘Do they take the sharp edges off your machetes too?’ ” Sandoval said, laughing. “He was a little bit indignant, like, ‘They think we can’t handle this kind of thing.’

“They really have that kind of intensity that children can have for an activity, an intensity that is so difficult to get from [older students] later on,” she said.

“It’s a combination of Halloween and cultural pride,” Salcedo observed. “The kids enjoy dressing up and doing something that people do not do anymore, working hard to present it the way it used to be.”

* “Latino L.A.” family matinee, John Anson Ford Amphitheatre, 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. East, Hollywood, Saturday at 10 a.m. (Craft activities begin at 9 a.m.) $7. (On-site, stacked parking, $3 per vehicle for family show.) (323) 461-3673.