“Mucho Machismo” is funny from the moment its sassy title appears in old fashioned lettering, silent-film style, on a large screen. (Roughly translated, the hour-long dance is called “A Lot of Machismo and Few Men.”) The silent film goes on to introduce our main characters: five stereotypical manly men in jeans and ten gallon hats and big belt buckles, and then, in a sudden jump cut, “These Bitches”—the same dancers transformed into their alter egos, dressed in short shorts and crop tops, strutting across the screen in full fabulousness as the largely Spanish-speaking audience wolf-whistled and hollered. Make no mistake, this dance was going to be a party—but there was emotional depth here, too, along with narrative intelligence, fabulous costumes, and impressive craft.

Director of the Dance Program at St. Mary’s College of California (full disclosure, I currently teach creative writing at St. Mary’s, but have no connection to the dance program), Lopez grew up dancing Mexican folklorico, with its mariachi-driven traditions of men in boots stamping out rhythms while the women swish colorful skirts. He earned a Master of Fine Arts from the dance program at California State University, Long Beach. Interestingly, all of Lopez’s four fellow dancers in “Mucho Machismo” studied at San Jose State University, where the former Limón Dance Company member Gary Masters built a dance program encompassing training in many modern dance techniques, as any program must, but also especially the technique of José Limón. “Mucho Machismo” brilliantly entwines these folklorico and modern dance traditions with a storyline that weaves perfectly between them.