Dirce Flores is a professional dancer from Mexico. From a young age she was exposed to a breadth of performing and creative arts and developed a lifelong love and appreciation of the role the arts play in our lives and in community building.

With Dirce’s Mexican Folk Dance Youth Workshop ongoing and SVMoA’s Dia de los Muertos celebration and dance performance on the horizon, we sat down to discuss art, her inspiration and the intersection of community.

How did you end up in the Wood River Valley?

I initially moved to the U.S. to a suburb of Portland, Oregon, called Woodburn. We came to the Wood River Valley to visit my husband’s family for vacation. We had a baby who was then 6 months old, and we thought we loved it here. We decided to move here for a better quality of life. It felt so much like home, like our village in Oaxaca. You know when you have that feeling that you are home. It’s a small town, you can walk around, you can see nature.

When did dancing become a part of your life?

My hometown is in Oaxaca, Mexico. And it is a very special place, a cultural center of Mexico. Early on in pre-Hispanic times it was a cultural center, and then later, there was a church, a monastery, a train station, and it was a very important place during revolutionary times. My town has a lot of cultural significance. My mother had a café in the center of downtown, and next door to her café was a place called Casa Cultura, which was a cultural center that offered classes in all the arts. My siblings and I attended dance, music, painting, and acting classes, and classes in all the creative arts. My favorite was dancing; it made me feel so good. At a very young age, I knew I was born to dance. I started taking dance classes at three years old, and by five years old, I knew.

I first took Mexican Folklorico Dance, but then I continued to do ballet. My teachers were students of Amalia Hernández, who is credited as being the greatest Mexican Folkloric dance teacher in history. Mexican Folkloric dance is considered an expression of Mexican culture that you do on holidays with your friends and family at celebrations like birthdays and Dia de los Muertos. Amalia Hernandez was a Folklorico dancer, yet she was also classically trained as a ballerina. She developed new techniques for Folklorico dancing and developed choreography that pushed Folklorico dancing, creating a new level of modern dance. She legitimized and elevated the traditional folk dance and brought it to the international stage and universities.

I eventually went to a performing arts high school in Oaxaca City, about 40 minutes from my village. I would travel every day to the big city where I continued to learn the arts and humanities, including acting, painting, drawing, art history, world history, and philosophy. But my focus was always dance. I continued to study Folklorico dancing and ballet, and it was in high school that I discovered contemporary dance. I loved contemporary dance as a form of creativity and expression.

What was the experience that led you to teaching?

I loved contemporary dance so much that I eventually tried out for a modern dance program in Mexico City, but I was told I was not right for modern dance. Heartbroken, I returned home, and my mother told me I had to choose something else, which led me to the humanities, although my love for dance remained. I first started teaching Mexican folk dance at age 15 in a neighboring town. While in university, I was asked to teach at a dance school, Folklorico dancing to children, and while there teaching I was able to continue my study of jazz, ballet and modern dance. Which brings me to where I am today! No matter the adversity, I continued to dance — Folklorico, ballet, AND modern dance!

So, you love to teach dancing, but you are also a very active member of our Sun Valley Museum of Art community. You have been a Folklorico Dance teacher with us going on two years but are also very involved in our Dia de los Muertos celebrations. Why is the Sun Valley Museum of Art important to you?

The Sun Valley Museum of Art is an open door to the community for creativity. I come from a state in Mexico that is ethnically diverse. Oaxaca is the fifth-largest state with the most municipalities — 570! And it is the state with the most ethnic groups — 16 — that includes Indigenous groups such as Mixtecas, Zapotecs, Mazatecs, Afro-Mexicans, and Chatinos, just to name a few.

Diversity, as I saw in my home state, makes the community rich; it does not divide us; it unites us.

Sharing cultural arts with the community is important. The first SVMoA workshop I taught had one Caucasian student, and the workshop after that had two Peruvian students. The current workshop I am teaching has a Caucasian student from Carey.  They are all so amazing, such wonderful dancers. I have been able to rediscover Folklorico Dancing and share Mexican culture with the community and teaching it, the community will be proud to celebrate it and not just watch it from a distance but enjoy it!

Forthcoming is our Dia de los Muertos celebration coming up on October 26 at the Hunger Coalition. You will be performing with your dance class. Is there anything you want to share?

Yes, our SVMoA Folklorico Dance class will be performing a few traditional dances. Dia de los Muertos is one of the biggest celebrations for Mexicans. It is the day we remember our loved ones who are no longer with us; they are the heroes of the holiday. We make the altar in our home and have a ceremony.

You mentioned your mom owned the café next to Casa Cultura. Did she do anything special?

My mom made a special Pan Muertos. The ingredients were flour, butter, egg, orange juice and zest, and anise. The special ingredients that make Pan Muertos different are the anise and the orange.

Finally, is there anything you want to say about the arts? OR Anything else you would like to share?

I just want to say that when we open spaces for each other, we will understand each other better. One way of doing that is teaching creativity and sharing cultural activities. When a human being is exposed to the arts at a young age, it changes their life forever.

On the power of the arts & SVMoA:

"When I visit SVMoA and attend their events, I’m reminded of the revolutionary and reparative power of the arts. Art gives me hope, and this hope is not naïve. It’s not romantic or small or abstract. It’s concrete: glue and paint, scissors and tape, words and drawings, songs and sculptures, book pages and ink and gouache and oil and canvas. It’s the certain knowledge that it’s possible to make something new."

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"When we make art, we exercise the muscles we need to remake the world. The theorist Elaine Scarry calls art objects – sentence, cup, piece of lace, painting – fragments of world alteration. If individuals can make these smaller changes, she writes, if one person can alter the world in fragments, just think what can be imagined together, what might be possible in community: a total reinvention of the world."

—Sarah Sentilles, Author/Educator/Program Participant

On the power of the arts:

"New ways of thinking about and interacting with the environment are urgently needed. The arts excel in connecting different disciplines and synthesizing divergent viewpoints. They are an important means of collaboration, where new perspectives can be created and communicated."

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"The arts have the power to revitalize society’s relationship to nature, and to create more inclusive narratives that help broaden the scope of our vision of the non-human world. The arts have the power to make the environment matter. And what matters to a society is what it works to preserve."

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On how SVMoA helped further her work:

"Forests, Foraging and Fires at SVMoA in 2014 gave me the opportunity to produce a major new work: Colonize the Earth, a twenty-foot photographic scroll including thirty separate photographs, that merged together to create the finished work. By bringing together the work of eight artists, Forests, Foraging and Fires opened a dialogue about society’s changing relationship with the natural world. It was exciting to see this section of my long-term, multi-media Leafcutters project come together for the very first time."

—Catherine Chalmers, Exhibiting Artist, Forest, Foraging and Fires

"We’ve been able to teach some of the students at the high school. I remember one particular time when we worked with them on a variety of different kinds of music—we coached them, we played along with them, and then they joined us for performance. I think for everybody, it was such a wonderful experience. It’s exciting for us to open doors to music for young people, and I think it gives them such a feeling of being special and a feeling of accomplishment to play along with professional musicians. I can’t wait until we can do that again, and I can’t wait until the next time we come to the Wood River Valley area."

—Diane Chaplin, Portland Cello Project

"In such times of rapid change, global crisis and pitched battles in extremist public discourse, it is the arts that help us see the positive and meaningful side of human existence and communication. Artwork can communicate injustice on a broader level than all the talking heads on the news and in social media. Schools especially must retain the arts in every discipline as possible to help our younger generation gain greater literacy through our social-emotional contexts."

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"The work your educational liaisons have done in our classes for decades has been vital for our students to gain a more meaningful understanding of a specific content area. From using recycled plastic to display a watershed in Science, to building geometric shapes in Math using specific formulas, and to enriching our lives through international music groups, SVMoA has been a guardian of the arts in our public schools. Our partnership with SVMoA has been very beneficial to our staff and students."

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"There are so many highlights from our partnerships that I recall, but here are a couple that standout. With our District-wide focus on Music and World languages, two acts were game-changers for me and many students: The Latin American musicians Alfredo Rodriguez and Pedrito Martinez provided exceptional entertainment and messaging to our Dual Immersion students at the Argyros Theatre and the memorable Black Violin Concert at WRMS provided the greatest outpouring of student excitement I have ever witnessed. I thought the bleachers were going to collapse. The key with so many of your artists you bring to us, is that they always talk about their lives when they were in school. The message of focus and not giving up is so important. I hope our partnership can continue for decades to come as your work is critical in these uncertain times."

—Fritz Peters, Principal WRMS and BCSD Acting Superintendent

"To be able to recreate in the mountains AND easily partake in a cultural life of the highest caliber—well, wow. What a surprise that was, coming from big city life with vibrant arts communities."

"I’ll never forget my first visit to the Museum, and the Andy Goldsworthy installation that took my breath away. I quickly learned of the quality and access to the arts here, which allowed deeper engagement than I had ever really experienced."

—Trina Peters, Art patron/program participant/past Board president

"Regional exhibitions are as important for artists as they are for audiences. They allow us to see our work in new contexts, to hear different voices and gauge new responses. Sometimes they allow us to try things we’ve never done before. It takes a vision, conviction, intelligence and plain hard work to mount the caliber of exhibitions the museum presents, year after year.  I am honored to join the many artists in the SVMoA exhibition roster and grateful to be associated with this extraordinary institution."

—Pat Boas, Commissioned Artist, Deeds not Words: Women Working for Change

“As the art teacher at Hailey Elementary, SVMoA played a vital role in my curriculum. To have such a diverse and vibrant art scene readily available supported my teaching and enriched my student’s love and appreciation for art. The Museum’s frequent visits to our school exposed them to all forms of art, through visiting artists, musical and theatrical performances and workshops. Field trips to the museum became a much anticipated and favorite event. Even simple things like how to look at art in a museum was an important part of their art education. Transformed, countless have gone on to win SVMoA scholarships furthering their love and appreciation for the arts.”

—Bob Dix, Educator, Artist/Retired Educator/Class Instructor