Maria Torres Latin to the Core
With a firecracker personality, Maria Torres is Latin to the core. Her movements and speech patterns sparkle with enthusiasm, and her ideas spill over as she speaks of where she came from and where she is going. Her mother is Dominican/Cuban, and her dad from Puerto Rico. With her brother and two sisters, Saturday was a day of celebration in her Brooklyn, NY, home. Dad played the Conga drums, they ate a big meal and they danced.
Coming from a family with no extra funds for dance lessons, Torres, who was only 12 years old at the time, asked her mother to get her working papers so she could have a summer job to pay for her own training. She started at The Ailey School and sought out teachers such as Jose Meier, Frank Hatchet and Phil Black. Taking classes in ballet, African, funk, hip-hop and jazz, she couldn’t get enough of dance. Torres says she was “blown away by all the amazing dancers she saw.” She “unofficially” began to dance professionally when she was 15, winning $10,000 performing at Six Flag’s Great Adventure while training for the Harvest Moon Ball at Madison Square Garden. The Fred Astaire Dance Studios offered her a scholarship to compete nationally as a representative of the studio.
Photo by Melissa Hamburg
A major participant in all aspects of the industry, Torres aims to do her best as a teacher, choreographer, director and performer. She says all the areas of dance “have their own perks.” Her diverse background has allowed her to create her own style, a fusion of Latin and jazz dancing that she calls “Latin groove.” It was challenging because she did not want to lose any of the purity of either style. Now, she passes along her special style to other teachers and currently teaches an international class of all levels from beginners to professionals at Broadway Dance Center.
When auditioning performers for projects she is either choreographing or directing, she looks for technical skills as well as “clarity of movement, and dancers who are sure of who they are.” Torres says she “broke all the barriers of age, size and color,” so body image is not that important to her. Torres feels that the success of the 1997 film Dance With Me helped Latin jazz evolve from ballroom to theatre dance, and that hip-hop “absolutely had a positive effect on youth and gave interest to other styles.” According to Torres, the down-point “is the lack of dance education.” She says, “Ballet has taken a back seat and needs to be re-energized.” Now it is “supply and demand and because of television and films, other styles are the headliners.”
Although Torres worked on many projects as a choreographer, her first directorial assignment was the off-Broadway musical The Life and Music of Celia Cruz. She received a best choreographer nomination for the off-Broadway musical 4 Guys Named José and did special choreoraphy for “Swing.” Her film credits include Disney’s College Road Trip, Six Wives of Henry LeFay, due out this fall, Enchanted, the dance scenes in “El Cantante” with Jennifer Lopez and Mark Anthony, and choreography for the television show “So You Think You Can Dance?” She has worked with Vanessa Williams, Patrick Dempsey, Andie McDowell, Enrique Iglesias and Tim Allen, among others.
During what little time is left in her schedule, Torres is involved in costume design, likes to read and enjoys seeing old films. Within the profession, she has traveled extensively, and most recently completed a television project in Spain. She says, “Dance is an open ticket to the world and as an artist being creative breaks down the barriers of color and race.” What gives her the most joy is “being able to live my dreams and enjoy each day.” Torres has her own company and looks forward to giving performers the opportunity to be seen and heard.