Ballet Folklórico de México evokes
rich cultures in graceful spectacle

Ballet Folklórico de México, created in 1952 by dancer and choreographer Amalia Hernández, always draws a crowd. From ancient Aztec rituals to the vibrant fiestas of modern Mexico, the company of dancers and musicians fills the stage with pageantry, grace, and cultural authenticity. 

The Mexico City company makes its first appearance at Penn State in ten years when it performs at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, October 10, in Eisenhower Auditorium.

The company’s repertoire of about forty ballets, including more than seventy-five folk dances, conveys a broad swath of history and dozens of cultures from what is now Mexico. From pre-Colombian civilizations and Spanish imperialism to revolution and independence, the dances and music evoke a vivid journey through the past into the present.

A Los Angeles Times critic calls the company’s productions a “passionate… impeccable…and unequaled point of entry to the riches of a fabulous culture.”

The creations of Hernández, who died in 2001, are based on many of the most cherished traditions of the Mexican people. While the choreographed stories of nature, war, religion, mythology, courage, love, and death are traditional in origin, Hernández refined and enhanced them for modern audiences.

The company has two troupes that alternate tours and performances in Mexico and abroad. The troupe appearing at Penn State includes more than three dozen dancers and ten musicians. The scheduled program features ten ballets, several with multiple dances. Popular works on the program include Deer Dance, which portrays the hunting-oriented Yaqui people who managed to avoid Spanish colonialism; Tlacotalpan Festivity, a commemoration of the Candelaria Virgin that uses enormous puppets; and Jalisco, a celebration of the state that through its sensual music, refined dances, and dazzling costumes symbolizes the soul of Mexico. 

More than twenty-two million people have witnessed the ballet’s sophisticated, technically brilliant, and exquisitely costumed presentations. The company, which has more than 15,000 performances to its credit, has appeared in sixty countries on more than 100 international tours.

More than 3,500 dancers have performed in the ballet through the years. The company’s school, housed in a Mexico City building designed by the founder’s architect brother, has educated 25,000-plus students.

Against a traditional background in which a girl’s role was to prepare to be a woman in the home, Hernández began studying dance at age 8. Her father, a military man and politician, allowed her to study movement but only with private instructors.

As her knowledge of ballet and modern dance grew, Hernández felt less than passionate about the genres she was learning. They involved mostly foreign music and choreography, but she was attracted to the dances and songs she saw and heard on her father’s land and in her travels. She came to realize that in the mountains, valleys, and many corners of her country lay cultural treasures that should be shared.

Following her dance training, Hernández worked at Mexico’s National Institute of Fine Arts as a modern dance teacher and choreographer. But in 1952 she left the institute to create her own company. She wanted to be able to present, with complete freedom, dances inspired by Mexican folklore.

She started small. The original company, known as Ballet Moderno de México, had just eight members. But the artistic director was equipped, as one writer observed, “with the ethereal grace of a young dancer and the strategic capacity of a general.”

A television show, for which Hernández had to conjure, choreograph, and dance a new ballet each week, offered the fledgling troupe an audience. Before long the company garnered the notice of government tourism officials, who asked Hernández to take her company on tour to other countries in the hemisphere.

After a particularly noteworthy appearance at the Pan-American Games in Chicago in 1959, for which the company first adopted the name Ballet Folklórico de México, Mexican President Adolfo López Mateos agreed to provide the troupe with government backing to help make it “the best dance company in the world.”

In 1961 the Mexican government chose the company as its official representative at Paris’ Festival of the Nations. Amid the rave reviews of French critics, the ballet earned the first of its more than 200 awards for artistic merit.

Since the 1960s, Hernández’s company has thrived and grown into one of the planet’s great cultural and artistic institutions.

Artistic Viewpoints, an informal moderated discussion featuring Salvador López, Ballet Folklórico de México general director, is offered in Eisenhower Auditorium one hour before the performance and is free for ticket holders. Artistic Viewpoints regularly fills to capacity. Seating is available on a first-arrival basis.