DISD
Twelve years ago, Leah Longoria Huggins started teaching dance at Sunset High School. Today she is also on the board of the North Texas Ballet Folklórico Competition, which she helped found, and hers is one of the top high school cultural dance programs in North Texas.
According to a news release from Dallas ISD both Sunset and nearby W.E. Greiner Exploratory Arts Academy earned impressive marks at the inaugural North Texas Ballet Folklórico Competition (NTBFC), which was judged by a panel of select maestros and professional dancers who scored performances on a scale of 0-100.
These two Oak Cliff schools earned all 95s and 100s, leaving Sunset with three Division I titles and Greiner with two, DISD reports.
The recognition could have a lasting effect on some students’ lives, according to instructors.
“Some of the biggest impact our program has had is that dozens of students go to college for dance,” Huggins says. “One of our former students recently came back to Sunset to student-teach. Seeing those kids getting full ride scholarships for folklórico, go into university pom squads or make their college drill teams is a full circle moment. As an educator, it is wonderful to see that they apply what they learned here into collegiate dance.”
As a person of Mexican descent, Huggins says, she focused on implementing a well-rounded program with several cultural dances – including jazz, hip hop, ballet, African, modern and ballet folklórico – integrated into the curriculum.
On the NTBFC board alongside her is Daniel Negrete, who teaches dance at Emmett J. Conrad High School in the Vickery Meadow area and Karla Hardaway, a high school dance instructor from Carrolton.
“The two other dance teachers and I who are on the board came together because there is nothing for our students in this space. And we said, ‘Let’s create our own!’” Huggins says. “We’re trying to get Ballet Folklórico accepted as an official UIL activity.”
Students remark that the dance programs help them feel closer to their cultures.
“I was born in Mexico and I moved to North Oak Cliff when I was young,” Sunset Dance Company Captain Leslie Nuñez says. “I wanted to connect to my heritage and my culture and joined the Greiner dance group in middle school. I can relate to the students and the community as well, not necessarily because a lot of them have moved here from Latin America, but because of the culture of this area and the city where I grew up.”
