The Española Valley was recently well-represented in San Francisco by a group of nine dedicated and hard-working young dancers. Las Mariposas spent a week in the city by the bay in September performing, learning new dances and teaching young children traditional Mexico folk and contemporary dances.
The group will perform a 15 minute choreographed dance Feb. 6 at McCurdy’s annual Gala. This year’s theme is Hawaiian.
Led by Melania Pumphrey, Las Mariposas has put traditional moves to Hawaiian music and created a dance dedicated to the volcano goddess Pele.
Las Mariposas practices twice a week and perform at churches, fiestas, celebrations and bizarres as requested. Their peak season is the summer and they spend the winter honing their skills.
“We have our strength from all women,” Pumphrey said Jan. 22 while the group took a break from working on the volcano dance. “We celebrate powerful women.”
She said after performing at the Northern New Mexico College’s foundation dinner, they felt inspired to accept an invitation to the Brava Theater. They had declined an earlier invitation by Cuicacalli Baile de Escuela to serve as master teachers for the youth who were planning to host an event.
“We rehearsed for four hours at Bryant Elementary School, working with the dance students on stage presence and performance,” Pumphrey said. “Bryant Elementary School is located in the Mission District of San Francisco. The demographics are the same as ours in Espanola.”
The group was founded as a co-ed dance group but Pumphrey said it was difficult to keep the men coming back, making partnering difficult. They took the weakness and turned it into a strength, a group of young, attractive women who want to dance and are dedicated to getting better and raising money to perform elsewhere.
Three McCurdy students are in the group, two of them in the eighth grade. Michaela Pumphrey, Melania’s daughter, started dancing in the third grade.
“I learned to dance from my mom and it was fun,” she said. “I wanted to keep doing it.”
Eighth-grader Krista Maestas also caught the bug early.
“I was dancing at the Oñate Center and saw the women dancing when I was leaving one night,” she said. “I thought that was cool.”
The third McCurdian is Ashley Vigil. The senior has been dancing since she was 14 with Artes sin Fronteras, Roger Montoya’s group.
“I always wanted to dance balet folklorico and my mom was passing by the Oñate Center one night and called me and said they were having classes,” Vigil said.
She had danced flamenco the previous summer. From there she went on to be a co-founder of Las Mariposas two years ago.
Vigil said she’ll keep dancing as she moves on to University of New Mexico to major in nursing. Currently she’s a part-time assistant admin at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
The ladies are planning a trip to New York City Oct. 5 through 10, where they’ll perform, teach and take some lessons themselves.
They spent last summer traveling New Mexico and performed in Colorado as well. The group does its own fund-raising selling breakfast burritos or whatever idea they come up with. They accept donations through Northern New Mexico College’s foundation. Make checks payable to Las Mariposas and forward to Northern.
Pumphrey can be reached at 747-2295 or lasmariposas@nnmc.edu.
McCurdy’s Gala starts at 6 p.m Feb. 6 and tickets can be purchased by calling McCurdy at 753-7211 ext. 216.