Leah Schneider Moreno knew she wanted to be a dance teacher since her very first Mexican folklórico dance class at five years old.
“You have to grab the skirt that way… you have to put your posture differently,” Moreno would tell her peers as they learned dances in her hometown of Pericos, a little village off the Pacific coast in Mexico’s state of Nayarit.
“I remember my teacher telling me, ‘You have to work on your posture, too,” she said with a smile.
When Moreno moved to Omaha in 2001, she brought her love for the traditional dance with her. Now for nearly two decades, the 46-year-old has taught Mexican folklórico throughout the metro, including with the Mexican Dance Academy of Nebraska, her studio once located at 1822 Vinton St.
When COVID-19 shut the studio down in March of 2020, she began to dream of her next move— not just for her dancers, but for the entire Latino community. Now, she’s bringing Omaha a new stage in a castle-like building at the corner of 35th and Center Street.
The Hispanic Art Center of Omaha, which is in the process of becoming a nonprofit organization, opened its doors at 3504 Center St. in March for dance classes and soon will offer music and theater training for all ages. Housed at the site of the former Center Theater, the renovated building will include a state-of-the-art stage, an auditorium, a dance studio and dressing rooms.
With plans for cheap or free classes and performances, Moreno is determined to welcome all to the center, especially immigrants.
“I believe in our community,” Moreno said. “It really needs this kind of place.”
“Dance makes me feel free”
Moreno strives to give her students what dance gave to her as a child: a space to feel free, safe, and more like herself.
From a young age, Moreno knew she was trans. ”But to be accepted I had to perform in a different way,” said Moreno.
In folklórico dance, men must exude strength while women soften the ritual with delicate movements, Moreno said. But even moving within these binaries, dance gave Moreno a way to express herself in a world that wasn’t accepting of the LGBTQ+ community.
“As a trans woman, I’m always feeling segregated,” she said. “I fell in love with dance, because dance makes me feel free.”
In her coastal town Pericos, pursuing a career as a dancer was a lofty goal — dance and other art forms are more accessible in a big city, Moreno said. She moved to Tepic, the capital of Nayarit, to train as a professional dancer and teach dance classes, and was granted the opportunity to perform in a world-traveling dance company.
But her future changed one evening in August of 2001.
While walking home from a wedding in a village near her hometown, Moreno was kidnapped by a group of men, shoved in a truck, and driven in the darkness to a secluded area. The men tied her to a tree and for almost three days she remained there, suffering violent assaults by the men due to her identity as a trans woman.
When the men finally let her go, she knew she had to leave Mexico to protect herself and her family. With her United States visa she’d been granted for her traveling dance company, she crossed the U.S./Mexico border into California, and continued on to Nebraska.
Finding home in Omaha
When Moreno arrived in Nebraska, she knew no English and feared more violence would come after her kidnapping. At the start of her time in Omaha, she slept on a friend’s floor with only a blanket and walked or took the bus to the child care center she worked at.
One day, while reading El Perico, she saw an ad for dance teachers that led her to an opportunity to teach with Marcos Mora. The experience introduced her to other community members passionate about strengthening the arts in South Omaha. For years, she led dance groups in basements of shops on South 24th Street until she finally opened the Mexican Dance Academy of Nebraska on Vinton Street.
Through the trauma and grief of her experience, Moreno chooses to see how it brought her to where she is today. She came to the United States, met her husband, became a mother to her son and has been able to pour her love of Hispanic arts into the Omaha community.
“I have so many reasons to be happy in life,” she said. “The hard past is away.”
Moreno shares her story to give voice to others in Omaha who have endured assault because of their gender. She shares it for other immigrants in Omaha who also fled their country due to violence.
”As an immigrant, it’s difficult to leave your family, your friends, your job, your profession,” Moreno said.
Moreno said Omaha’s Latino community still has a ways to go to be more accepting of the LGBTQ+ community.
“Little by little, I want to show to the community, a trans woman inspires life to so many people,” she said. “It’s not about gender, it’s about your contribution to society.”
“I’m an ambassador of my culture”
Technique and tradition have always been primary focuses of Moreno’s dance classes.
She and her staff teach students traditional styles from regions across the states of Mexico. Each style differs in the zapateado, footwork and tapping techniques that have been passed down through ancestors of each region, whether they’re indigenous, European, afro or mestizo.
“We’re teaching history, we’re teaching about the dance, how different cultures mix it up,” she said. “I feel that responsibility, because I feel that I’m an ambassador of my culture.”
She passes that responsibility onto her students, too, telling them, “I’m preparing you to be the ambassador to new generations.”
María Sosa was shy when she began taking dance classes with Moreno at age 5.
“Leah helps her students break out of that shell,” said Sosa, who now works as a dance teacher on Moreno’s staff. “She helps you find that confidence that you have inside of yourself.”
Marina Rosado, journalist and lead anchor for Telemundo Nebraska, has known Moreno for almost 20 years as an artist, businesswoman, and friend.
“On countless occasions I have seen the unique way she works, the patience with which she teaches children and adults, and the discipline she demands of herself,” Rosado said. “On all those occasions, Leah makes magic with very few resources.”
The new center will give Omaha’s Hispanic community the opportunity to share their talents and traditions of Latin America through many disciplines of art, she said.
“I am very excited to think that after knocking on many doors and working tirelessly, Leah has her own stage, a stage that she generously makes available to anyone who shares her love of art and culture, without labels, unlimited,” Rosado said.
On a cold Sunday morning in March, the inside of the Hispanic Art Center is filled with the sounds of English and Spanish conversations as staff members help parents sign their children up for dance classes.
Moreno walks onto the shiny, wooden dance floor, greeting friends and answering questions like ‘when do dance classes start?’ and ‘which shoes will I need for performances?’.
Dancing Mexican folklórico connects many of Moreno’s students back to their roots, just as it did for her when she first arrived in Omaha twenty years ago. Now she’s excited to have a place of her own to continue that tradition.
“I’m here sharing my experience and letting people know they can be whatever they want to be,” Moreno said. “They can follow their dreams in this country.”