In photos: inside LA’s thriving Mexican-American rodeo dance scene

In the early 1990s, a Mexican-American dance craze swept through Los Angeles and the American south-west. It was called quebradita (meaning ‘little break’) in reference to the flips and backbends that characterised this acrobatic style. While rooted in the vaquero [cowboy] tradition of northern Mexico, quebradita was a new combination of Mexican, Anglo and African-American influences accompanied by catchy tecnobanda music in rodeo grounds, clubs, parks and warehouses throughout the border region.

The dance waned in popularity at the turn of the millennium, before reemerging in the 2010s in a more toned-down form. Recently, however, it’s been revived and remixed by a new generation of teens as one of many vaquero dance crazes exploding in popularity on TikTok and Instagram. In LA, much of the scene centres around the Pico Rivera Sports Arena in the southeast of the city, where young people dance to live bands after rodeo events. Over the past few months, British photographer James Pearson-Howes has worked to capture the fast turns, swinging hips, and electric atmosphere of the dances in his ongoing photo series, Taller the Hat, Closer to Heaven.

“I see my work as a way to understand people, to see what makes us different but also what binds us together,” he tells Dazed. Intrigued by the social media-fuelled dance trends of the past five years, he stumbled across these vaquero styles on TikTok, and travelled to LA in September 2023 to document “the vibrance and energy” of the youth culture there. Shooting on film, he used shutter drag to keep pace with the action and preserve the details, down to the softness of the dancers’ hair as they spun around. He recalls, “I shot quite tight – it’s always about the people and capturing their faces and their style.” 

A fashion and documentary photographer, Pearson-Howes has always had an eye for subcultures, covering everything from the nascent grime scene in London in the 2000s, to the “strange and surreal” folkloric rituals still practised in obscure corners of the UK today. Having grown up going to raves in the 90s, community building around dance and fashion struck a chord with the photographer and he was immediately enchanted when he encountered the vaquero dance scene in LA. He tells Dazed, “Here, you have this classic Western look – the cowboy hat, the rodeo shirt tucked into belted wrangler jeans, the cowboy boots – but mix that with tramlines shaved into the hair, or guys with New Era caps on. It’s this mash-up of traditional and contemporary fashion that makes it so unique.”

Sydney Hutchinson, an author and academic from Tucson, Arizona, who researched the trend in the 90s affirmed the social and cultural importance of the dancers’ distinct style. “Quebradita appealed to thousands of Mexican-American youth who were looking for a way to be vocal and proud about their roots, especially with all the anti-immigrant legislation going on at the time,” she tells Dazed. “These kids mixed folklórico moves with steps from hip-hop, swing, merengue, and country, and paired traditional ranchero aesthetics with sequins and customised tees. It was loud and bright and flashy, and enabled these young dancers to gain visibility and claim space.”

22-year-old Angel Martinez from San Jacinto, California, is one of the dancers featured in Pearson-Howes’ project. Martinez began teaching himself to dance on TikTok and Instagram in late 2022 and hasn’t stopped. “I’m Hispanic and dancing is in our blood,” he says. “We dance for fun, mixing all the styles, adding more spins, and teaching each other new moves.” After a dance has ended at Pico Rivera Sports Arena, his friends head to a fast-food joint called Raising Cane’s and carry on until dawn. “Dancing is like therapy for me – it relaxes my mind and distracts me from the things I’m stressing about.”

Pearson-Howes is heading back to LA this year to shoot a short film about the community and the individuals he met, digging deeper into “what makes them dance”. Meanwhile, Sydney Hutchinson sees parallels between the political and sociocultural functions of the quebradita scene in the early 90s, and the dance crazes of today. “It seems to be one of those trends that comes in cycles,” she says. “As the first trend that brought together Mexican-American kids with those who had newly migrated from Mexico, quebradita had this political meaning behind it, which wasn’t so obvious to outside observers. Right now, as we face down the prospect of another Trump presidency, it makes sense that people are connecting with it, and finding positive ways to assert their identity.”

Follow James Pearson–Howes here for updates on Taller the Hat, Closer to Heaven.

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