Vanessa Sanchez and the group La Mezcla, from San Francisco, mix modern tap and zapateado to celebrate the women of the Zoot Suit Riots of the 1940s.

The hollow wooden stage is essential for dancing the “zapateado” — a rhythmic stomping that makes the platform vibrate.

Rarely has the zapateado of tapping shoes met with honking horns and flashing headlights in such a cacophony.

Female performers like the great Carmen Amaya, a star of the ’30s and ’40s, could get away with wearing trousers and dancing so-called masculine dances, full of the rapid-fire percussive steps known as zapateado, because they didn’t challenge heterosexual norms.

For more than 25 years, artistic director Adriana Astorga-Gainey has dedicated herself to preserving traditional Mexican dance in L.A. — like the lively percussive zapateado — and remixing it with modern and ballet.