Cecilia Vasquez on Connecting People and History Through Dance
By Danny Peterson, board member for Hilltop Arts Collective
Cecilia Vasquez is the general and artistic director of Ballet Folklorico Xochihua, or BFX, which she leads in partnership with her husband, Gabriel Davila. BFX recently performed at Hilltop Arts Collective’s annual festival, Summer Jam West. Hilltop Arts Collective board member Danny Peterson spoke with Cecilia about her art.
Danny: How do you describe your work to someone who is not familiar with it?
Cecilia: I’m a dancer, history teacher and choreographer.
Danny: I read that you have 13 years of experience in Mexican folklore. What originally drove your interest in that?
Cecilia: Travel! Folklore opens a lot of doors, and a lot of experiences. I love dancing; I love history; I love Mexican history. I feel like Mexican folklore is a mix of history and dance. It requires discipline and respect for the thing you’re doing. And I met my husband that way! He dances, too, so now we dance together; we run this [BFX] together; it’s something that we really love to do together.
Danny: You started BFX in 2022. What has that journey been like?
Cecilia: We have grown a lot. We started it because we missed dance. We were trying to dance again, but we didn’t have a space, so we started this ourselves. It’s been amazing. We have received a lot of people who have never danced before, and they just want to reconnect with their roots – they are like, “Hey, teach me.” We have also met a lot of people who have dance experience who want to help us, and asked to join, so we have been making a lot of new friends.
Danny: How do you balance the past, honoring Mexican folklore and history, while remaining relevant to second- or third-generation Mexican-Americans who didn’t grow up in Mexico?
Cecilia: At first, it was really hard to balance. In Mexico, we have high competence in dance, but we are new here [in Columbus]. I’m trying to help students understand why we are doing what we do, and learn from the history of the thing we’re doing. We are not just dancing. I need students to know that a lot of people in Mexico still dress like this; they are not costumes.
Danny: Tell me about the dresses you use for performances. Where do they come from?
Cecilia: I bought them in Mexico. We perform dances from different [Mexican] states. Each state has four to five different dresses because of Mexican geography and climate. One state could have three different climates depending on the sun. The steps could be similar, but they are different, and they use different music; it’s a lot of things. All of the things for the hair, and sometimes the earrings, I make them. I’m trying to teach the girls and the teens how to make them.
Following summer performances at the Columbus Arts Festival and Summer Jam West, look for upcoming announcements to see Cecilia and Ballet Folklorico Xochihua perform this fall. Catch her on Instagram @cclix and BFX @xochihua_ballet.
This article is part of a bi-weekly column brought to you by the Greater Columbus Arts Council as part of the Art Makes Columbus campaign. Explore a calendar of events, public art database and artist stories at columbusmakesart.com. To learn more about GCAC grants visit gcac.org.