As the DJ fulfilled students’ request to play “Payaso de Rodeo” by Caballo Dorado, Karina Martinez, psychology and kinesiology sophomore, jumped up to join the line dance. As the first banjo notes played, the floor suddenly flooded with beginners and experts participating in the same four basic steps.
Thursday’s Tex-jano Night, held in the Shirley Bird Perry Ballroom at the Union, featured lessons from student dance club Texas Line and a prize raffle. Marques Guerrero, chair of special events for Campus Events and Entertainment and an aerospace engineering senior, who pitched and organized the event, said he wanted to unite students of all different backgrounds and skill levels.
“If they didn’t come with friends, they’re definitely finding people that they can dance with and interact with,” Martinez said. “And I think everyone feels pretty comfortable just going out there and doing it.”
Government senior Arshia Papari said he began Persian folk dancing as a child, later focusing on formal classical dancing in college with Texas Ballroom. He came to Tex-jano Night dressed in a purple polo, blazer, cowboy hat and boots, which he said he’s worn most days since high school. Papari invited economics sophomore Juan Flores, a friend from Model UN, to join him at the event. The pair were partially drawn in by the promise of beef empanadas and dessert, which they both said were better food offers than in past years.
“Tonight’s like a dinner and dance sort of combo, which is I guess something that’s a little bit harder to come by in different situations outside of the University,” Papari said.
When coming up with the idea for Tex-jano night, Guerrero said he looked for an event to bridge the gap between September’s annual Mid-Autumn Moon Festival and November’s Day of the Dead celebration. He collaborated with E+E’s first-year leaders in progress to brainstorm and coordinate appearances from other student organizations in order to cultivate the feeling of a dance hall despite being inside the Union.
“I feel like line dancing also is kind of a removed thing from us culturally,” Guerrero said. “We don’t really have those little bars where you go out and you two-step, you swing dance. It’s more like a club space.”
Guerrero said he faced setbacks when planning; almost all the student dance organizations he contacted were busy during October. But he was determined to provide attendees with a good experience and said ultimately some even told him the music was better than at Maverick’s.
“I really do like country and line dancing, but also the Mexican part … We get together and just have fun,” Guerrero said. “I wanted to be able to introduce a lot of the people on campus to that — maybe give them something they’ve never experienced before — and also give the people that have been to those events before something maybe they did back home, but they don’t really have an outlet to do here.”
