Dance group helping kids connect to their roots

Mexican Americans learning cultural dances, language.

Andrea Garcia PHILADELPHIA — was a professional folklore dancer in her native Mexico. But, after moving to Philly in 2016, she became a domestic worker. As a way to help her three kids connect with their Mexican identity and take a break from electronics, she cocreated Ñuuxakun in 2021. The dance group offers a bilingual and bicultural experience for kids in South Philadelphia, and has developed a following over the last year, with several holiday performances.

Ñuuxakun means “people who laugh” in Mixteco, an ancestral Indigenous language. At a recent weeknight rehearsal, as children happily play and count their tempos, the name sounds fitting.

In the group of 31 children, some of the dancers don’t speak Spanish, some don’t speak English, and others are fully bilingual. It doesn’t much matter once they enter their rehearsal room at the Bok Building.

“I used to think that only one language fit in one person,” said 8-year-old dancer Bryan Sandoval, of South Philadelphia. “When I started coming to the group … I was shocked to see that wasn’t true. My mom had told me people spoke more than Spanish, but I thought she was playing!”

Dancing in this multicultural environment for the past two years helped him adapt to speaking both languages ahead of his transition into a bilingual school.

For 7-year-old Rosario Juárez, the group has become a lifeline to her culture, after her school “strongly advised” her parents to stop speaking Spanish to her.

“She was shy and wouldn’t speak to her teacher or her classmates,” said Juárez’s mom, Juana Aguilar Ozorno. “They said it was because we spoke Spanish at home, and that their only solution was to only talk to her in English. Now she doesn’t speak Spanish.”

Aguilar Ozorno drives 30 minutes from Pennsauken to bring Rosario to the three weekly rehearsals. She said dancing at Ñuuxakun has helped her daughter break out of her shell and understand more Spanish, even if she doesn’t yet speak it.

As dances are choreographed, children learn the cultural meaning and the history behind them.

“The parents and I teach the kids about traditions, how we used to celebrate back home, and what it means for our community,” Garcia said.

That knowledge has given kids a sense of pride in what their community has to offer and the spaces they can have as Mexican Americans.

For Liam Luna, 15, the group provided a space to learn about Mexican history, culture, and contributions in a way he had never experienced in school.

“I am more proud to be Mexican now,” the South Philadelphia teenager said.

HEATHER KHALIFA/THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER Instructor Andrea Garcia (right), leads a dance during a Folklorico Nuuxakun class at the Bok Building in South Philadelphia.