ballet folklorico de riverside
The Leyenda Dance Company is a local ballet Folklorico group that teaches classes from children starting at 5 years old and all the way past adulthood. This company also performs local shows for corporate events and weddings as well as commercials for tv, Hollywood films, television shows, and even theater performances. This dance company serves Los Angeles county, San Bernardino county, Riverside county and Orange county as well as provides international tours all over the world such as Thailand, Mexico, Italy, France, Dubai, Hong Kong, Beijing and many others.
This group has been in business for over 10 years and there have been over 800 students registered in classes in the last 13 years.
This event has really been a huge trend setter for Mexican Ballet Folklorico while having unique signature movements like the plato which turns into a pivoting V shaped arm stand. Another signature move is going to be Zapateados con volados which is so high that the male dancers almost seem to float on the air whenever pictures are taken of this in slow motion. The male dancers also kick really high and this is because in 2005 when this move was developed, the company wanted to provide a huge wow factor. They wanted to provide recognition and pride to this genre of dance and from the traditional start, it was during the 3rd year in business was the year that they started to really have their own flavor and style.
Anyone who has seen their shows notice that the women dancers often bend much lower than normal and will do body rolls that are incorporated within the faldeo movement. Basically, their style is strong performance art and features a lot of wide range motions for very traditional steps.
This is a modern type of Mexican ethnic dances. Mexican folk dance started centuries ago within pre-Hispanic times until now. Mexico happens to be divided into 32 states and every state has subdivisions and some of the larger states will have 16 subdivisions. Beyond that, Mexican traditional dance is also considered to be classified in chronological order starting from preconquest like Aztec dances all the way to colonial dances, French intervention dances, mestizo dances, and then Mexican Revolution dances.
This group has over 70 songs and 14 areas that may be put together to create a custom theater show for anyone. The combination of the subdivisions and the chronological styles create a variety of dances that this company can research, teach to students and even choreograph. This helps to preserve Mexican traditional dances as much as possible and it is done using their classes, which are a big part of Riverside.
This dance company uses a lot of academic research and even traveled into Mexico and interviewed local master teachers, researchers and more just to be able to create a unique style to teach in the Riverside classes. The choreography is all based on research that is done for theater shows.