Ballet East Exposes East Austin Youth to the Arts

By Denise Rodriguez
Known for having a well-developed arts scene featuring popular art institutions such as the Mexic-Arte Museum, La Peña, and the Mexican American Cultural Center, Austin is a diverse city. However, even with all the city’s credentials, one would hardly imagine a modern dance company flourishing in East Austin but Rodolfo Mendez created Ballet East in hopes of using dance as a medium for community development. Mendez grew up in East Austin and admits that one of his goals when starting Ballet East was to create a permanent dance institution on the eastside.
“Most kids in public schools are going through a lot economically and socially,” he says. “I think dance can be an outlet for that energy.”
The eastside boasts a large Latino population and it is no secret that several new immigrants who settle here may need assistance adapting to their new culture and surroundings. Mendez not only teaches dance through his outreach programs like Dare to Dance, he tries to help the youth in his community as much as possible. Presently, he is working with a 13-year-old whose father is in jail and whose mother is in Mexico, and trying to register him for school as homeless because he has no guardian.
According to Mendez, a child from a broken home is easy to spot because you can see the difficult time they are going through and lack of focus. He believes, “The arts are a way of forgetting where you are. It has been proven that the arts give students self-esteem, confidence, and focus. Kids learn discipline and learn to work as a group,” he asserts. It is this training and discipline that has allowed several of his students to become successful in life by going on to attend universities on scholarships, and dancing in professional companies that travel the world.
Melissa Villareal began dancing with the company as a teenager. After 24 years, she is now associate director and Mendez’s right hand. “Many doors have been opened to me because of Ballet East, including my own studies in New York City under dance scholarships, from dancer, to choreographer, to teacher, and now associate director…I am blessed to be part of it. This is why the company must go on, so that we can continue impacting lives of youth in the community, like it impacted mine.”
While the company’s outreach programs continue to grow, Ballet East is first and foremost, a professional dance company. Each year, the company presents two performances, one in the spring and one in the fall, featuring the work of guest choreographers, like Regina Larkin from NYC, Steven Mills from Ballet Austin, and Sharon Marroquin from Mexico City, as well as Ballet East protégé Villarreal. To make the performances accessible to families, they include matinees on Sunday and free passes for children.
Although Ballet East is a diversified company containing dancers from various cultures and backgrounds, Mendez believes it is important for the kids at his programs to identify with the people they see performing. “It is important for the kids to see their own people on stage that way they start thinking, ‘If they can do it, I can do it,” Mendez admits. He also stresses to his students that, “Education is important. You can’t make it in the world with just dancing.”
When asked what makes a good dancer Mendez responded, “It takes passion, you have to want it. You have to have a certain energy, a certain spark.” Fortunately for Mendez, several of his students have proven to have that energy and that spark. He credits his parents for giving him an affinity for dance. They danced flamenco and won several local contests, but never made it to the professional level. He fondly recalls his father being his biggest supporter, and now for the youth growing up in the same neighborhood, Mendez has become theirs.