Tina Ramirez, who founded Ballet Hispánico in New York on a shoestring more than 50 years ago and built it into the country’s leading Hispanic dance performance and education troupe, died on Tuesday at her home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. She was 92.

Verdery Roosevelt, Ballet Hispánico’s former longtime executive director, announced the death.

Ms. Ramirez, who came to New York from Venezuela when she was a child, was a dancer herself. In 1963 she turned to teaching when she took over the studio of one of her instructors, the flamenco dancer Lola Bravo. A lot of her students were from low-income Latino households, and she saw how dancing changed them.

“The kids began to concentrate better, to work better with other people,” she told The Democrat and Chronicle of Rochester, N.Y., in 1981. “They just got to feel better about themselves.”

Hoping to reach more students, she wrangled a bit of funding from the city’s Office of Economic Opportunity and in 1967 started a summer program called Operation High Hopes to introduce children to dance and other arts. The program’s dance performances proved popular and in 1970, when some of those youngsters were teenagers, Ms. Ramirez established Ballet Hispánico with a $20,000 grant from the New York State Council on the Arts.

“I wanted to give employment to Hispanic dancers,” she told The Democrat and Chronicle. “I wanted to keep them from having to dance in nightclubs. They were serious dancers and deserved the opportunity to be treated as such.”

She also wanted to bring the cultural influences she was familiar with to a broader public.

The “ballet” in the troupe’s name sometimes threw people who expected classical ballet. Her company mixed styles and influences, leaning more toward Latin folk and modern dance.

“Ballet means anything with a story line and music,” she once said. “It doesn’t mean pointe shoes and tutus.”

In the beginning, the troupe had limited means and performed wherever it could — prisons, hospitals and frequently outdoors, in parks and on the street.

The company grew in prestige and reach, eventually touring across the country and in Europe and South America.

Ms. Ramirez “was fiercely proud of her heritage and her community,” Ms. Roosevelt, the company’s executive director during most of Ms. Ramirez’s tenure, said by email. “She had such a great eye for choreographers who could marry the dance forms, music and aesthetics of the Spanish-speaking world to contemporary dance techniques. There was nothing like it when she started.”

“She taught us the importance of preparation, discipline, hard work and living boldly from the mundane to the stage.”

– Nelida Tirado

Just as important as the company’s performances were its educational efforts. It had its own school, and also sent its dancers into the schools of New York City or wherever it stopped while on tour. Joan Finkelstein, the former director of dance education for the New York City Department of Education, saw Ms. Ramirez’s impact firsthand.

“Tina understood that beyond uplifting general audiences, Ballet Hispánico could instill pride in and appreciation of Latinx dance and cultural heritage, empowering all our children for future success,” Ms. Finkelstein said by email.

“Making a connection with what’s going on right now is very important to me. I think that’s why audiences everywhere are so drawn to us. We reflect what they know of life — the difficulties and the joys.”

– Tina Ramirez

In addition to studying with Ms. Bravo, Ms. Ramirez studied under the classical ballerina Alexandra Danilova and the modern dance pioneer Anna Sokolow. She was able to bring those influences to Ballet Hispánico, which presented new works and interpreted older ones through the lens of Latin culture. At the beginning, it was an identity that still needed shaping.

“When I first started Ballet Hispánico in 1970, there wasn’t a dance company that represented the Hispanic people,” she told The Times in 1984. “At that time, people didn’t know what Hispanic meant — not even the Hispanics.

“I was criticized for calling the company Ballet Hispánico,” she continued. “People felt I should name it after a country or a city or a town. But I said no, because we’re 21 nations that all speak Spanish — and we should all be included.”

Among the countless dancers who studied under Ms. Ramirez early in their careers was Nelida Tirado, who has gone on to an acclaimed career as a flamenco dancer.

Ms. Ramirez’s company garnered good notices right from the start.

Ms. Ramirez was an energetic woman who, after a day of working with dancers and dealing with administrative matters, would often spend her evenings in the audience at dance shows, scouting new choreographic talent.