A Mexican Dance Troupe Brings Togetherness to an American Town

It isn’t easy having a boy who likes to dance. Ruby Jimenez stood up to preconceptions, did the right thing for her son, and along the way made Greeley, Colorado, a powerhouse in Mexican folklorico dance.

Jimenez founded Greeley Rodarte Dancers, Inc., in 1992 to give young Leonardo a way to develop his art without spending a fortune on private lessons. The troupe grew fast as other parents found their kids priced out of school sports and after school activities by pay-to-play fees. Incorporating as a nonprofit allowed Jimenez to seek grants and charge each member family a mere five dollars per year, a fee that hasn’t budged. She named the troupe after the recreation center where they rehearse; it was named for the late housing activist Jesus Rodarte.

The troupe is in its fourteenth season, which is old in the Mexican dance world. Jimenez sums up Greeley Rodarte’s longevity in two words: family involvement. Ideally, parents and children sign up together. Even parents who don’t want to dance are expected to be involved in behind-the-scenes operations.

“We’ve had so many people come in and say they’d like to bring their kids and leave them and let them learn dance, but we just can’t do that,” Jimenez says. “For one thing, we can’t afford that. We’re not babysitting. For another, there’s so much of a relationship that develops when both parent and child are involved in dance.”

The current dancer roster includes a father, his daughter and two sons; and the daughter and two sons of an alumna.

Another source of success is that if the client is low on funds to pay for a performance, Greeley Rodarte will work for food.

“Usually we don’t charge a lot for the performances, but we ask for something for the kids to eat,” Jimenez says. “We keep our prices low if we can get a meal.”

Jimenez doesn’t teach dance herself. For the first several years she brought in a teacher from Denver; now Leonardo, back from a stint dancing at a Mexican resort, does the teaching. The troupe emphasizes the diversity of Mexico, donning the costumes and performing the dance steps of 16 distinct cultural regions.

Jalisco, home of mariachi, is most familiar to northern audiences. How about Tamaulipas, with its leather-centric cowboy and cowgirl outfits?

“We will do maybe a half-hour performance with seven different regions,” says Jimenez.
“We’re always getting comments from the public: ‘We didn’t realize there were different regions like this.’ We’re actually educating the public as well as the dancers about the regions.”

Costumes are a significant cost for all Mexican dance troupes. Greeley Rodarte buys some from Mexico, and creates some from donated materials. Silk flowers for the girls’ hair come from Memorial Day wreaths discarded by the local cemetery. And used hospital sheets make fantastic shirts.

“They sanitize them before they give them to us,” Jimenez says. “I don’t tell the kids a lot of this stuff.”

Greeley is a sometimes-combustible environment where rural and urban, Anglo and Hispanic, come together -- not always happily. It may not be an exaggeration to say that dancing saves lives here. Her most inspiring moment came early in the troupe’s history and involved a teenage girl who loved to play the saxophone. But her grades were abysmal, so the high school put her on probation and took away the one thing that kept her involved: band.

“She came to me and said, ‘Ruby, are you going to drop me out of the dance troupe? Because they’re going to drop me out of band.’ I said, ‘No, I will not do that to you’,” Jimenez says.

The girl quit school, but later scored at the top of her GED class, earning her the right to give a graduation speech.

“Her whole speech was, the reason why she went back to school was the dance troupe; the dance troupe gave her the confidence in herself. When that happened, I said we were going to continue with this company no matter what,” Jimenez says.

Pilar Rodriguez is the dad who dances in Greeley Rodarte with his three children. His wife Hilda plans to join, too, as soon as their youngest child, now five, is old enough.

To Rodriguez, who feeds cattle for a living, Greeley Rodarte is a chance to spend time with his kids that he wishes his dad had spent with him. “I try to support them in everything that I can,” he says.

Before the family discovered dancing, their life consisted of “just work and go home, that was it,” says Rodriguez, 35. Eldest child Michael, now 14, joined the troupe first, seven years ago, and his father is glad he did. While gangs have sucked in many of Michael’s friends, Michael is happy to be with his family, dancing.

“Instead of being out there on Sundays on the street doing whatever they’re doing, he’d rather go practice,” Rodriguez says. “That’s much better for me. I can be with them.”