Arturo Magaña

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For Arturo Magaña, folclórico dance is an expression of their Mexican and LGBTQ+ cultures.

Magaña has a deep understanding of who they are and what matters to them, including being their authentic self; a gift they received at an early age from their mother.

“This is who I am. I need to represent myself,” they declared to Susan Cashion, co-founder of the Los Lupenos Dance Company, asserting their right to dance with men and perform wearing a skirt.

Today, Ensamble Folclórico Colibri, which Magaña directs and co-founded, strives to brings a sense of acceptance to LGBTQ+ people.

“I’ve seen the faces of young people and their parents when we are performing,” they said. “They see themselves and they see the representation and the pride of our heritage as queer men, or as a lesbian or as a nonbinary person

Colibri includes members both in and outside the LGBTQ+ community. The dance company accepts straight members to show solidarity with its allies. But not everyone is a supporter.

In 2018, the organization experienced pushback by a Folclorico group in Mexico which threatened to request the Mexican government stop them from performing. But Magaña would not be cowed.

“We put our foot down and we said, ‘we’re not going anywhere. You can do whatever you want. We have a freedom of expression,’” they said.

As a result, within a month, Colibri’s likes on Facebook rose from less than a thousand to about 9,000. Unfortunately, the group still faces some backlash from those who feel it goes against tradition.

“It’s more of this fear and repression,” Magaña said. “When we put on our show, I added a tagline that said, ‘We’re not here to change tradition. We’re here to add our stories because they matter.’”

Sharing its community stories through dance is everything to Magaña, and sometimes has the power to change perspective. In 2018, Colibri performed a traditional piece called Quadro with the addition of a lesbian wedding and a dance portraying two men falling in love.

“People saw us in a different light,” Magaña said. “It wasn’t just about dancing men to men or women to women. It was for us to convey our day-to-day story because that’s what folclórico does.”

While performing in an event with the California School for the Deaf, a seven-year-old trans dancer who was so moved, she started crying and hugging them and asked to wear one of their skirts. Her mother said it was life changing for her daughter and made her feel seen.

“That to me, was probably the best acknowledgement that we have received,” Magaña said.

Looking back

In 1992, at age 18, Magaña witnessed men dancing together for the first time during a ProLatino folclórico performance. Intrigued, they joined the dance troupe, which was invited to Washington, D.C. to dance for the Peace March, in addition to performing during San Jose Pride and San Francisco Pride festivals.

After ProLatino dissolved around 1995, Magaña joined the elite dance company Los Lupenos de San Jose as a lead dancer. They stayed with them for about 15 years, performing in ethnic dance festivals and touring with renown artists such as Linda Ronstadt and Lila Downs.

To bring folclórico to the LGBTQ community, they joined Colectivo ALA, Colibri, which eventually became its own entity. The troupe marched in the San Francisco Pride Parade I 2016, receiving an award for the most vibrant and colorful group and honorable mention from the city and county of San Francisco. It annually participates in Silicon Valley Pride. Colibri also headlined Latino Pride in Seattle. They were honored to be invited by Somos Seattle, a queer organization focused on representation of the Latino community.

Colibri was adopted by the School of Arts and Culture at Mexican Heritage Plaza in 2017 as a cultural partner. In 2018, it performed a stage production boasting 40 dancers, including performers from Mexico’s Grupo Folclórico Teocalli. Colibri is also cultural partners with Mosaic America and was featured in 2024 at the World Arts West Festival.

Getting personal

Magaña, a native of Juarez, Mexico was born in 1974. They immigrated to the U.S. in 1988 with their family. Not knowing English and feeling alienated, they experienced culture shock. At school, they were taught all their lessons in an ESL classroom with other people Spanish speakers.

But they felt blessed their mother accepted them as they were and gave them the freedom to pursue their passions.

“I always knew who I was as a queer person,” Magaña said. “I didn’t really have the name, of being queer or gay but I knew I was different.”

Magaña started dance at ten years old at the Casa de Cultura in Mexico. Seeing Folklorico ProLatino in connected them to Mexico, introduced the possibility of two men dancing together and helped define who Magaña was.

To be their authentic self and have self-express as a queer artist, Magaña parted ways with Los Lupenos in 2015.

“There was an opportunity where we got invited to dance and dance men to men,” they said. “I asked permission… and I was denied. I was pouring all my heart and soul into dance, and to represent Los Lupenos and my culture and I was being poured into a cage.”

At the School of Arts and Culture, performing in 2015 with the male co-director was a personal turning point.

“We got on stage… holding hands and holding partners, and we didn’t even want to touch ourselves because we were in front of an audience,” Magaña said. “We didn’t know how they were going to react, so we were very timid. Through the middle of the song, we heard the kids start clapping and cheering. At that moment, something sparked. We were afraid of our own identity, how we were going to be received by other people. But other people are enamored with what we’re doing. It was the right time for Colibri to be part of the community.”

Magaña found strength in RuPaul’s advice.

“I learned you don’t have to pay attention to anyone. You do something that you love because you love it,” they said. “And if other people cannot accept it, (it) is their fear, not the fact that you’re doing something wrong.”

They enjoy performing with Colibri in festivals.

“When people see us dance, they appreciate the color, they appreciate the dance. They appreciate the beauty of the art and it’s beautiful,” Magaña said, adding the troupe performed with the San Francisco Symphony and San Francisco Opera and was featured on the mainstage at the San Francisco Pride celebration.

LGBTQ+ folklorico groups in Mexico emulating Colibri’s mission feels like a seal of approval to Magaña that what Colibri is doing and has done is the right thing.

“It’s representing ourselves as who we are, doing a cultural art, performing a cultural piece as we are,” they said, adding their piece include activism. “We have beautiful pieces that depict a gay wedding, lesbian wedding. We have a beautiful piece from Michoacan that actually depicts the violence that is perpetrated on our trans community. Not all of our stories are happy stories. The main character does not survive. But it’s the reality of what happens to our community. Colibri being a social justice group… and we represent our community… it’s important for us to represent every aspect of our community.”

As Program Manager for Avenida’s Rainbow Collective, which provides services and enrichment for the LGBTQ+ older community, Magaña feels he in the right place at the right time.

“The fact that they are celebrating the community, that they’re doing research to improve the health of our community, is important to me,” Magaña said. “Now that I’m about to be 50… I think that I was placed in this position to also look at myself and look at the services that I need as an aging queer artist. Sadly, our elder community goes back into a closet because of the generation that they grew up in. So having the ability to offer this type of service is very important.”

Magaña said they want to be able to lend a hand, advocate for somebody, provide support and represent their community.

“I think that one of the biggest compliments I have received when I perform,” Magaña said, “is from an audience member that says,’ I see myself in you. You are representing myself and my culture.’”

Read more about Ensamble Folclórico Colibri here.

Ensamble Folclórico Colibrí

folclorico 1

Arturo Magaña attended a ProLatino meeting in 1992 where he first experienced, at 18 years old, a folclórico performance. He witnessed men dancing together to express stories, and he joined immediately. For two years, the group was invited to Washington to dance for the Peace March as well as San Jose Pride and San Francisco Pride. Around 1995, ProLatino dissolved, and Arturo looked elsewhere to continue to dance.

Arturo joined the Los Lupenos de San Jose dance company around this time as a lead dancer. It was important to him to have the LGBTQ aspect of dancing represented, so he requested approval from the Dean of Dance at Stanford, the co-founder of Los Lupenos, to bring men together to represent the LGBTQ community. He was denied time and time again to create this type of group in the company.

Around  2013, Colectivo ALA invited Arturo and Los Lupenos to put on a folclórico performance at their anniversary event. Arturo remembers fighting to get permission for this performance, “I said, ‘you can’t repress me. This is who I am. I need to represent myself,’ and Dr. Susan Cashion, a co-founder of the Los Lupenos Dance Company, said, ‘absolutely we have your back. Anything that you need, costumes, music, choreography, you do it. This is you.’ She gave me the opportunity to represent myself and bring that to Colectivo ALA anniversaries and that sort of seeded the idea for Rodrigo and myself to bring a program to the LGBTQ community.”

Arturo started the LGBTQ dance group at Colectivo ALA and left Los Lupenos. The group was named Ensamble Folclórico Colibri, and they were part of the Colectivo ALA group. At a certain point, Folclórico grew beyond the Colectivo ALA group and became independent. In 2016, the group marched in the San Francisco Pride Parade and received honorable mention from the City and County of San Francisco as well as receiving an award for the most vibrant and colorful group. Every year since 2016, they have participated in Silicon Valley Pride.

In 2017, the Ensamble was adopted by the School of Arts and Culture as a cultural partner at the Mexican Heritage Plaza. In 2018, the Ensamble was able to put together a full stage production where they invited an ensamble from Mexico, Grupo Folclórico Teocalli. That was the first time that they had over forty dancers, some men in Mexican Folclórico skirts, on the main stage of the Mexican Heritage Plaza stage.

In Seattle, a group called Somos Seattle, a queer organization focused on representation of the Latino community, brought Ensamble Folclórico Colibri to headline their Latino Pride. This was a great honor for Arturo and the ensamble.

In 2018, the organization experienced push back by an organization in Mexico who threatened to sanction them and contact the Mexican government to stop them from continuing. The worst part of this experience was that it was coming from the Folclórico community, a director. Arturo stood his ground, “We put our foot down and we said, ‘we’re not going anywhere. You can do whatever you want. We have a freedom of expression.’ That brought us to be more recognized, to the point where our Facebook page had like less than a thousand likes and within a month we ended up with about 9,000 likes. So the world and the community started seeing Folclórico Colibri more seriously.”

Ensamble Folclórico Colibri is an LGBTQ+ group, including folks that are in the LGBTQ community as well as others who are not. Arturo and the group believes that it is important to not repress those that are repressing you, so by accepting the straight members into their group they are showing solidarity with their allies who will stand with them.

The group still faces backlash today by those in California and other communities. The Folclórico community is still close minded, but there is progress being made. Arturo said, “I want to say that maybe 60% of the men who dance folclórico are part of our LGBTQ community. I feel that it’s more of this fear and repression that they have and they translate this into us not being traditional or being offensive to our culture. When we put on our show, I added a tagline that said, ‘we’re not here to change tradition. We’re here to add our stories because they matter.’ I know for a fact that in the fifties, when Folclórico became a bigger thing, there were queer people dancing. It’s just they’re not permitted to put it on stage.”

It’s important to Arturo that the group features their stories on the stage and add to the folklore of folclórico. “For example, in 2018, in one of the very traditional pieces, we call it Quadro, we put together a lesbian wedding, and it was on stage and was received well. Another piece I choreographed was a coming out story, two men falling in love. People saw us in a different light. They saw that it wasn’t just about movement. It wasn’t just about dancing men to men or women to women. It was for us to convey our day to day story because that’s what folclórico does. When you see a performance of folclórico, you see a representation of either a town, a festivity, or a main event in a family. I wanted to do the same thing, but with our queer identity, that’s one of our main components now.”

“I’ve seen the faces of young people and their parents when we are performing and they see themselves and they see the representation and the pride of our heritage as queer men or as a lesbian or as a nonbinary person. We have had a whole family unit, after our performance, come to us and thank us for giving them the platform to endorse their identity through culture, because they didn’t have that. Not only have they been removed from their place of origin, but also affcted by the cultural shock that they receive from living here. So to see a representation, through folclórico and costumes on stage, it’s been a major impact for them,” said Arturo on the group’s impact on the community.

Read more about Arturo Magaña here.

To learn more about Ensamble Folclórico Colibri, visit their website: Ensamble Folclórico Colibri

“We had an event with the California School for the Deaf, which was a challenge because we’re going to dance and do videos and they couldn’t hear our footwork, but that’s when we met our first trans dancer. There was a student who was seven years old and she was already transitioning. When we performed, even though she couldn’t express with her voice, she came up on stage and she started crying. I’m gonna start crying myself. She started crying and just hugging us and feeling so comfortable. She asked us to take one of our skirts so she could wear it. That to me was probably the best acknowledgement that we have received. Her mom also came up and said, ‘Oh my God, you guys have completely changed my daughter’s life because she feels like she’s important. She matters.’ That was beautiful. That was really beautiful,” Arturo Magaña.