The rising sensibility: Latino

The beauty and emotionality of opera sometimes bring tears to the eyes of Plácido Domingo, but never more so than when it’s a family affair. In June, when Los Angeles Opera presented the zarzuela, or Spanish operetta, “Luisa Fernanda,” the tenor performed a role originally created by his father, who was a zarzuela singer, as was his mother. Joining him onstage in a supernumerary role was his 5-year-old granddaughter, Nicole Domingo. And watching from the wings every night was much of the Domingo clan. ¶ Surrounded in both the literal and figurative senses by loved ones, singing in his native language, Domingo was particularly moved. “It was like seeing the true Plácido,” says mezzo-soprano Suzanna Guzmán, a fellow “Luisa Fernanda” cast member who has appeared onstage with him many times during the last 20 years. “He sang from the earth through his feet up through his mouth and poured it out. He was crying in the last act.”

This was the fulfillment of a dream for Domingo, who had wanted to bring zarzuela to L.A. for more than a decade. And it might have taken even longer if his only role in the sold-out production had been as a singer. But he also happens to be the company’s general director.

Domingo has been affiliated with L.A. Opera since it started in 1986; he formally took over in 2000. Recently, however, he has been joined by a new group of arts leaders on Grand Avenue and nearby. They include Gustavo Dudamel, set to take the baton at the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2009; Miguel Angel Corzo, in the newly created post of president and chief executive at the Colburn School; and Olga Garay, recently named general manager of the municipal Department of Cultural Affairs. Although each of them hails from a distinct background and differs from the others in culture, age and more, they have one thing in common: They all identify themselves as Latino.

Indeed, these appointments mark an important moment for some of California’s most powerful arts institutions. And in a city with a Latino population at 46% and rising, it should come as no surprise. “It shows how the world is really full of different talent, that they are very well prepared and that the community would like to have them,” says Domingo, speaking by phone from Madrid, the city of his birth. Similarly, the Mexican-born Corzo sees the appointments as “a recognition that we are in a global society.”

The ascension of these arts leaders puts L.A. in a unique position. “There is a huge potential for L.A. to model leadership behavior in how artists and arts administrators of Latino descent can take their rightful place,” says the Cuban-born Garay.

The experience of “Luisa Fernanda” suggests that one change might well be in local arts programming. Domingo, for one, says, “We are looking for dates to do another zarzuela, Spanish opera or something. It’s no doubt that will be our inclination, to offer something to the Latin audience, to do something that will call the attention of our people.”

Garay, for her part, was most recently involved with bringing Spanish-language theater to New York’s Lincoln Center Festival. She previously worked at the Doris Duke Foundation, one of the country’s largest arts donors.

But seated in a meeting room at the Department of Cultural Affairs, in a mid-rise office building just blocks from the Music Center, she says that in her many years in the field, she has run across few Latino arts administrators. “If you look at the number of nationally recognized Latino artists in the nonprofit sector -- artists and arts administrators -- it’s pretty small,” she observes. “Certainly the arts have not been a place where Latinos generally enter into the American dialogue at the highest echelon.”

Networking at work

Garay first learned of the Cultural Affairs opening through director- actor Diane Rodriguez, currently associate producer and director of new play production at the Center Theatre Group. Rodriguez later served on a panel that interviewed her.

“I totally think we’re entering a new chapter for Latino artists in L.A.,” says Rodriguez, formerly co-director, with playwright Luis Alfaro, of the Mark Taper Forum’s now-disbanded Latino Theatre Initiative. “I do feel these new leaders will be more open to a diversity of aesthetic.”

Another of Garay’s interviewers was Richard Montoya of the comedy group Culture Clash. “Every member on our panel had come into contact with Olga at one point in their artistic lives,” says Montoya. “That spoke volumes about the range of Olga Garay’s knowledge and development of artists and arts administrators. Her hands were in all the important arts/theater/music movements of the last 10 years.”

Still another panelist once had Garay’s job. Al Nodal, who has known her since the 1980s, presided over Cultural Affairs during the height of “multiculturalism” in the ‘90s. At that time, many grants were made available to artists who wanted to make art about their racial/ethnic/sexual identities. And money was also earmarked for institutions that supported this work.

“Initially, this was a banner that the National Endowment for the Arts took leadership on, and they put pressure on local agencies, such as this one, to mirror that behavior,” says Garay.

By the mid-1990s, that tide had started to turn. All the same, the Latino presence on all levels in the country kept growing, and for more than a decade, pundits and others have been predicting an imminently arriving “Latino moment” in the arts.

Yet it hasn’t quite happened as expected. For every successful Latino/Mexican/Chicano-specific music or theater festival and every showcase such as Long Beach’s recently remodeled Museum of Latin American Art, there have also been sore points, such as the venue struggles of the Latino Museum of History, Art and Culture and the protracted battle over the city-owned Los Angeles Theatre Centre.

The latter has been the subject of a drawn-out struggle since 2003, when Cultural Affairs solicited proposals to run it. A Cultural Affairs panel selected the team of Will & Company and developer Tom Gilmore over a competing plan by Jose Luis Valenzuela’s Latino Theater Company. However, the City Council did not sign off on the agreement, and Councilwoman Jan Perry, in whose district LATC lies, tried to get the groups together without success.

In late 2005, the city issued a report recommending that the Latino Theater Company and the Latino Museum of History, Art and Culture be given a lease to run LATC. In early 2006, final approval was given and four months of renovations were to begin. Only now, though, is LATC set to reopen Oct. 25.

Moving in across the street, however, is Company of Angels, with its newly appointed director, Armando Molina. “There’s a new generation of Latino arts leaders running non-Latino-specific companies,” says CTG’s Rodriguez, citing Cornerstone’s Michael John Garces, Highways’ Leo Garcia, the Getty Villa’s Ralph Flores and Playwrights’ Arena’s Jon Rivera, among others. And Latino-oriented companies such as Culture Clash, Chicano Secret Service and East L.A. Classical Theatre continue to attract crossover audiences.

But simultaneously with the LATC victory, the Latino theater community lost at least one source of support. In 2005, then-new Center Theatre Group artistic director Michael Ritchie disbanded CTG’s development labs for Latino, Asian, African American and disabled writers. Also put on hold was the Taper New Work Festival, run by playwright Alfaro. Rodriguez alone was spared the ax but was reassigned to a job no longer limited to cultivating Latino artists.

Ritchie has said his moves were motivated in part by a preference for production over development. And he was not alone. Costa Mesa’s South Coast Repertory had ended its Hispanic Playwrights Project the previous summer.

Clearly, institutions have moved on. “We are now post-multiculturalism in the sense of having abandoned a movement of asserting and celebrating cultural differences through art and culture,” says Garay. “We’re ‘post’ not because we’ve gone beyond something there’s no need for but because we’ve abandoned it.”

Rising through the ranks

The expansion of the Colburn School and its hiring of Corzo -- whose last stint in L.A., before he became president and chief executive of the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, was as director of the Getty Conservation Institute -- underscore the role of education in the rising profile of Latinos in the arts. So does the Philharmonic’s choice for its new music director. Dudamel, 26, who declined to be interviewed for this story but sent a few brief comments via e-mail, is the product of Venezuela’s National System of Youth and Children’s Orchestras.

Ironically, the Philharmonic -- which conducts blind auditions, as do most major orchestras -- has only one Latino musician. But the Colburn School could change that. Indeed, Corzo’s initiatives include “reaching out to other communities that haven’t had the opportunities, particularly in classical music and dance.” Corzo also plans a professional dance institute that would be given two or three years as a pilot program before a decision on whether to make it a permanent part of the Colburn curriculum.

That’s the kind of initiative that veteran modern dancer and choreographer Rudy Perez feels has become unfortunately rare.

“There are young Latinos who are interested in dance,” says Perez, who came to L.A. from New York nearly 30 years ago and continues to teach at the Westside Academy. But all too often, he says, these dancers may be discouraged from pursuing modern or classical dance. “They’re drawn to entertainment, staying closer to hip-hop or some kind of break dancing. It’s the economy. The style of movement is a quick fix but not specific technique, which demands a whole other kind of studio training.”

There are exceptions. One former Perez student, Victor Quijada, wound up in Montreal, where he founded the Rubberband Dance Group. “He started as a break dancer, went on to work with Twyla Tharp and is now on his own,” says Perez. “So there’s a perfect example of a Latino from L.A. who made good. He somehow got into my loop, and it made a difference.”

Yet for the Victor Quijadas of L.A. to make it, they must find a mentor such as Perez, a school such as Colburn or one of the few venues that sees its mission as supporting emerging artists and underserved communities.

Santa Monica’s Highways is one such place. Cofounded by performance artist Tim Miller and Linda Frye Burnham in the late 1980s, it is presenting its third annual Latino New Works Festival from Friday through next Sunday.

Playwright Leo Garcia, now Highways’ artistic and executive director, concurs with Perez that Latinos remain underrepresented in the arts. “If in fact 46% of L.A. is Latino, certainly 46% of our dancers are not,” he says.

Garcia himself was mentored by playwright Maria Irene Fornes. As a Latino, he says, “I was offered many opportunities, the connection to organizations and Latino artists who provided me with a space and was challenged by great minds. And they happened to be Latino.”

But seeing Domingo, Dudamel, Garay and Corzo in leadership posts will provide inspiration to even younger people, Garcia feels. “If as a young man I had seen these people as leaders, I would have looked on it as my birthright to have positions of power,” he says.

From the other side of the podium, L.A. has also left an impression on the Philharmonic’s future conductor. “The Latino community is a very loving and loyal community, as well as a very supportive one,” says Dudamel. “I’ve already seen so many people from the Latino community at my concerts in Los Angeles, and they have let me see how happy they are to be at these concerts.”

In the visual arts, meanwhile, Los Angeles has produced important Latino painters and sculptors and periodically offers Latino-oriented museum exhibitions. For example, the L.A. County Museum of Art is showing “The Arts in Latin America: 1492-1820” and in April will present “Phantom Sightings: Art After the Chicano Movement.” The latter will be the first offering from the museum’s 3-year-old Latino Arts Initiative and will be followed by a show from Cheech Marin’s collection.

Still, individual Latino artists can face a long haul. “Whenever I say I’m an artist, right away people put me within a stereotype of what they think I paint: colorful palette and so on,” says Salomon Huerta, whose next show will be at Santa Monica’s Patrick Painter Gallery in February.

To be or not to be

While doing graduate work at UCLA, Huerta made a concerted effort to create art with universal appeal.

“Being Latino, I went out of my way to produce an image that was neutral,” he says, “so that people would not focus on me, they would focus on the work.”

He succeeded. “One well-known collector, a couple, they bought a painting and then they wanted to meet me, and then they returned the piece,” he recalls. “They told the gallery that the reason why they returned the painting was because I de-Chicano-ized myself.”

Huerta’s experience exemplifies the conundrum faced by artists who want to explore their culture but don’t want to be confined by it. Fortunately, that incident was an isolated one, and he and others see progress.

“The struggle continues, but I do see light,” says Rodriguez of CTG.

For mezzo-soprano Guzmán, the present moment is “thrilling.” “Instead of ‘multiculturalism.’ the word I would use is ‘integrated-culturalism’ -- that’s what I hope is happening,” says the L.A. native. “We don’t have a lot of Hispanic ballerinas. We don’t have a lot of Latina concert cellists or even contemporary visual artists who aren’t known for Chicano art or Hispanic art. But this is such an important moment for change. I see it as un-pigeonholing the Latino artist.”

Un-pigeonholing -- and also affording opportunities not only for Latinos from other countries but also for those whose families have been here for generations. “I don’t know if Mr. Domingo will produce a Chicano version of ‘Porgy and Bess’ any time soon,” says Culture Clash’s Montoya. “But I would like to talk to him sometime soon about a libretto for the generations of Eastsiders who have toiled in the factories and sweatshops of this city, whose children now occupy the most important offices just down the street at City Hall and in Sacramento. Now there is a story with operatic proportions.”