Handed Down - Nevada Arts Council

1995–1996
Mexican Dance:
Icela Gutierrez, Reyna Esquivel and Gabriela Tshudy
The multipurpose room of a community school in
Las Vegas echoes with laughter and rapid-fire
instructions in Spanish as Icela Gutierrez tries to get
her students to line up for their next dance. She pushes
the button of her tape player and the room fills with
lively music. Icela runs to take her place among the
dancers, calling out instructions even as she performs
the steps herself, and that enthusiasm and camaraderie
enliven the whole group.
Although only 30, Icela has been performing and
teaching the dances of her native Mexico for twenty
years, and has recently brought her skills to southern
Nevada. She knew no one when she moved here, so
she put announcements in the local Spanish-language
newspaper and on the radio asking for interested students,
and in only a few months has created a close and
enthusiastic group of young dancers.
She chose to work with two dancers, Reyna Esquivel
and Gabriela Tshudy, in passing on her broad knowledge
of Mexican culture and dance. Both apprentices
were raised in Mexico and are very proud of their heritage
and anxious to share it with their new neighbors in
Nevada.
The members of Mexico Vivo, Icela Gutierrez’s dance troupe.
Not much more than a year after the formation of
the dance group, called Mexico Vivo, they are being invited
to perform at schools and restaurants on a regular
basis. At a rehearsal in the new Rafael Rivera Community
Center, which opened in early 1996 to serve Las
Vegas’ Hispanic community, the women’s bright full
skirts swirl against the black cowboy shirts and sombreros
of the men in a dance from Monterrey in northeast
Mexico. The dancers whoop and stomp as they execute
dramatic moves and interweaving choreography, mirroring
Icela’s infectious ebullience and accomplished
talent.
Each region of Mexico has its own style of costume,
music and dance that have been carried down for
hundreds of years. One of the most popular and wellknown
types of performing groups, both in Mexico and
in Mexican-American communities, is the folklorico
dance troupe, which performs dances of many regions.
Just in the last five years in southern Nevada there has
been a flowering of such groups, with Mexico Vivo one
of the newest. Because sound and movement are something
we all have in common, music and dance provide
a way for people from different cultures to get to know
one another, and as with any art form they highlight
both what we share and what makes each of us unique.
As a way to maintain a sense of cultural identity amid
the frenzy of change in Las Vegas, folkloric dance plays
an important role
in the Mexican
American community.
As Gabriela
wrote in her
application to the
program, “Folklore
is an echo of
the past, but at the
same time it is also
the vigorous voice
of the present.”
Icela Gutierrez
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