Tina Ramirez, who founded Ballet Hispanico in New York on a shoestring more than 50 years ago and built the country’s leading Hispanic dance performance and teaching troupe, died Tuesday at her home on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. she was 92 years old.
Verdery Roosevelt, longtime executive director of Ballet Hispanico, has announced his passing.
Ramirez, who came to New York from Venezuela as a child, was a dancer when he took over the studio of one of his instructors, flamenco dancer Laura Bravo, in 1963 and began teaching. Many of her students are from low-income Latino families, and she has seen how her dance has transformed her students.
In 1981, she told The Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester, New York:
Hoping to reach out to more students, she raised a small amount of money from the city’s Office of Economic Opportunity and in 1967 started a summer program called Operation High Hopes, which taught children dance and other activities. The program’s dance performances became so popular that in 1970, when some of these young men were teenagers, Ramirez received a $20,000 grant from the New York State Council for the Arts. Founded Ballet Hispanico.
“I wanted to give Hispanic dancers a job,” she told the Democratic Party and Chronicle. I deserved the chance to be treated like that.”
She also wanted to bring the cultural influences she was familiar with to a wider audience.
“In the early days, we wanted Hispanics to have a voice at the dance so that people would know us as people,” she told the New York Times in 2008 in a post-retirement article. “Because we went to the ballet and someone was crouching with a sombrero and it wasn’t us.”
The “ballet” in the name of the troupe sometimes threw those who were expecting classical ballet. Her company mixed styles and influences, leaning towards Latin folk and modern dance.
“Ballet means something with a storyline and music,” she once said. “I don’t mean pointe shoes and tutus.”
Initially, troupes were limited in their means, playing wherever possible, in prisons, hospitals, and often outdoors, in parks and on the streets.
“There were days when the streets were on fire,” Ramirez said. “It was so bad that if you looked at it the wrong way, there could have been riots. But we toured everywhere.”
The company expanded its fame and reach, eventually touring across the country, Europe and South America.
Ramirez was “extremely proud of her heritage and her community,” Roosevelt, the company’s longtime executive director, said in an email. , had a very good eye for choreographers who could combine aesthetics with contemporary dance technique.When she started, there was nothing like that.”
As important as the company’s performance was its commitment to education. It had its own school and sent dancers to schools in New York City and places they stopped on tour. Joanne Finkelstein, former director of dance education for the New York City Department of Education, saw Ramirez’s influence firsthand.
“Tina believes Ballet Hispanico can not only uplift the general audience, but also instill a sense of pride and appreciation for Latino dance and cultural heritage, empowering all children for future success. I understood,” Ms Finkelstein said in an email.
Ernestina Ramirez was born on November 7, 1929 in Caracas, Venezuela. Her father, Jose Ramirez, was a famous Mexican bullfighter under the name Gaonita. Her mother, Gloria, from Puerto Rico, was a homemaker and community leader.
Her parents divorced when she was very young, and her mother took the family to New York City, where she remarried, taking the name Gloria Setero Diaz and becoming famous for her advocacy of representing Puerto Ricans in the city. became.
For several years starting in 1947, Ms. Ramirez toured with dancers Federico Rey and Lolita Gomez, and their shows were often advertised as “Spanish Rhythms.” From 1949 to 1951 she lived and studied in Spain.
After returning to America, he started performing with his sister Coco. In 1954, the two were performing a flamenco routine in a St. Louis club with comic Joey Bishop and singer Dorothy Dandridge. In 1956, a headline in her The Courier-Journal, Louisville, Kentucky, headlined a touring play that proclaimed, “Her two daughters of a famous matador play princesses in ‘Kismet.'” continued to do so for years.
When that show played Meadowbrook in Cedar Grove, New Jersey in 1960, Carol Cleaver wrote in her Wyckoff News review:
Ramirez’s younger sister, Coco Ramirez Morris, has died.
In addition to studying with Mr. Bravo, she has studied with classical ballerina Alexandra Danilova and modern dance pioneer Anna Socorro. She was able to bring these influences to her Hispanico ballet. Ballet Her Hispanico presented her new works and interpreted her old works through the lens of Latin culture. Initially, it was an identity that still needed shaping.
“When I first started Ballet Hispanico in 1970, there was no dance company that represented Hispanics,” she told The Times in 1984.
“I was criticized for a company called Ballet Hispanico,” she continued. Because we are all 21 Spanish-speaking countries and should all be included.”
Among the countless dancers who studied with Mr. Ramirez early in their careers, Nerida TiradoShe is highly acclaimed as a flamenco dancer.
“Tina Ramirez has taught us to take pride and be committed to excellence, regardless of the type of work we do,” Tirard said in an email. It taught me the importance of preparation, discipline, hard work, and being bold from the routine to the stage… Opportunities don’t come quickly, but when they do, you have to seize them. “
Ramirez’s company grabbed attention from the start.
“Tina Ramirez’s Ballet Hispanico of New York is a company of thirteen dancers from the New York barrio,” wrote Jennifer Dunning in her 1974 Times review. charm. “
Ms. Ramirez was an energetic woman who, after working with dancers and dealing with administrative issues, spent her evenings in front of dance show audiences looking for new choreographic talent.
“Making connections with what’s going on is very important to me,” she told The Times in 1999. We reflect what they know about life: hardships and joys. “