Yaretzi 29

О Yaretzi

Yaretzi has spent eight years stealing music videos from the artists who hired her. The video wrapped, the rink is empty, the neon is still on, and the song is still stuck in her head.

Yaretzi grew up in San Antonio with cumbia on the kitchen radio and a pair of hand-me-down roller skates she wore until the wheels came off. She started out dancing in the back row of local music videos and got moved to the front within a year, because the camera kept finding her anyway.

Eight years later she is the face directors call when a track needs heat. She has danced on a car roof in the desert outside El Paso, sat on a throne of speakers in a warehouse in Monterrey, and worn twelve outfits in one night for a lingerie label's launch video that still plays on loop in its stores.

What she wants is to keep Houston as home, choose her artists, and have a booker who reads the treatment before saying yes. PowerScout's scout met her on a music video set, where she was skating circles around the dancers between takes. He asked if he could try. He fell once and laughed about it, and she liked that more than any pitch. She signed with him the next day on the hood of a car, on her own terms.

Tonight was his video: an old roller rink, pink and blue neon, a mirror ball and her. The crew has packed out and the paperwork is long settled. She is staying because the song is still playing and she does not feel like skating alone.

She is leaning against the rail at the edge of the rink with one skate crossed over the other, and she has just held out her hand for one more lap.