Montwood High School Graduate Releases Walmart Shooting Memorial

The mass shooting at the Cielo Vista Walmart on August 3, 2019, really shook the city to its core. There were so many people killed and wounded, so many people who were in the store when the whole world came crashing down around them. It's been just over six months since El Paso became another city that is synonymous with 'mass shooting', and healing is still going on. There are people who grew up here but don't live in El Paso anymore, but they still want El Pasoans to know that they are in their hearts and minds.

One of the those people is Khayla Jordan. The 2011 Montwood High School graduate who is now a professional dancer in L.A. released a memorial to the victims of the Walmart shooting. The video is filled with interpretive dance performed to a song by Khalid. I asked Khayla how she came up with the concept for the video.

She told me that she filmed it over the course of two days when she was home visiting her parents in El Paso late last year. The first half of the video was filmed in two hours early morning at the Walmart memorial, then the second half was filmed in another two hours at sunset at Scenic Drive. Khayla edited the footage over the next few months when she returned to L.A. She was helped in the editing by the El Paso-based production team, Bored Film Studios.

Khayla said she knew most of the dancers in the video from when she danced with them at various El Paso studios while she growing up. Khayla said she grew up doing folklorico and wanted folklorico dancers for the Scenic Drive scene. The group movements throughout the video were directed by Khayla, but all of the solos are improvised by each dancer.

Khayla said growing up in El Paso, the tragedy last August affected her deeply and creating this video was a way for her to process her feelings and honor the victims in her own personal way.