San Benito High School junior Felos Montoya never expected joining a dance troupe would give him the moves to tackle life’s challenges one step at a time.
Montoya, 17, started dancing two years ago. Since then, he hasn’t stopped.
“I never thought I’d get into this, honestly, because of my size,” said Montoya, who weighed 450 pounds when he started dancing and now weighs 270. “And it changed my life, honestly.”
Montoya is one of about 20 students in the middle and high school age group who found a weekday homework haven, a safe place for self-expression and a support network at the Hollister-based hip hop studio called Sammy’s Animation Dance Community.
When Montoya first started dancing, he had been struggling to pass academic classes, had been kicked out of several schools and was attending Santa Ana Opportunity School in Hollister. That was two years ago. Now he’s a student at San Benito High School and he isn’t failing classes.
“Before I came here, I wasn’t leading a life I was proud of,” he said. “And here, I felt like I was part of a family.”
Things changed when Montoya joined the group, as one of a small number of high school students in a mostly middle school-aged crowd, and realized people were looking up to him.
“I realized I have to be a role model for these kids here,” he said. “I tell ’em if they ever have problems they can talk with me.”
Montoya is not the only student who feels transformed by the program. Brody Cascio, 14, is another San Benito High School student who found a support network at Sammy’s. As Cascio moved to the beat of the music Sept. 25, he paid forward some of the things he’d learned in almost two years at the studio by leading other students in two pieces he had choreographed. It was for a nine-piece performance planned for the First Presbyterian Church’s TNT Youth Group in Salinas later that day.
“They’re not just helping us become better dancers,” Cascio said. “I’m a way better person than a year and a half ago.”
That need for family is something that Sammy Ramirez – the 25-year-old artistic director and owner of the studio – sees again and again.
“If it’s not found somewhere healthy, they’ll go somewhere else,” said Ramirez, who cited drugs, violence and gangs as other possible outlets for those seeking a sense of community and a release from pent-up emotions.
Ramirez, once featured on the American televised dance competition show “So You Think You Can Dance,” teaches kids various styles of hip hop including locking, break dancing, popping and tutting. His studio, Sammy’s Animation Dance Community, is a continuation of the now closed JJ’s Dance Studio, a combined clothing store and dance space once located off Fourth Street and Monterey Street in Hollister. The clothing store run by Ramirez’s stepfather Jonathon Martinez didn’t make it, but the studio did. Eventually, Ramirez took the studio into his own hands and moved it to its current home at a former roller derby skate place on Hillcrest Road. The studio’s white wall with its artsy, peeling paint finish still holds rainbow-colored letters that spell out the word “Skate.”
Ramirez found many of his students by teaching guest physical education classes at their schools and then offering scholarships to his classes.
That’s how Cascio came to the studio. Ramirez gave him a one-month scholarship to the studio, which was just enough time for him to convince his parents he had to stay.
Other students, such as Montoya, learned about the studio through social media. Montoya saw a posting about the group on Facebook and decided to check it out. He didn’t have a dance background.
“My family never approved of it,” he said, explaining that his Mexican heritage came with a certain “machismo,” which meant hip hop dancing wasn’t cool for young men. “To this day I’ve never had a parent come see me dance.”
But Montoya created a family of his own in this studio with its couches, bean bag chairs and expansive wood dance floor. It’s where he spends two to three hours a day five days a week.
“I’m either taking a class or I’m doing my homework,” Montoya said. “It’s more like my second home now.”
