Native American dance

Introduction

also called  Indian dance  or  American Indian dance 

 the dance of the aboriginal inhabitants of the Americas, often called American Indians.

      The treatment of Native American dance in this article is meant to focus first on certain general features of dance and their manifestation in a number of areas. The diversities existing within this larger framework then become apparent through consideration of the dances of the several culture areas or tribal groupings.

General characteristics

      Among the essential factors in an overall picture of Native American dance are the diverse types of dance, the organization of the dances in terms of participation, and the relations of human and deity expressed in the dances. In addition, a variety of other stylistic considerations are relevant, as are the foreign influences that have been absorbed.

Extent of dance forms

      Many themes, typically the celebrations of life transitions, developed in the Americas during millennia of residence, migration, and exchange. These were most prominent in the marginal cultures of western North America (particularly in what is now California, U.S.), Venezuela, and Tierra del Fuego in the southernmost reaches of South America. Mortuary rites were prominent in the northland and the deserts. War and hunt dances have had different degrees of prominence, their greatest development being among the hunters in the Great Plains of North America (see Plains Indian). So-called animal dances varied according to the local fauna, a tiger mime belonging to tropical peoples and a bear cult reaching across the northern part of North America and into Siberia.

      Religious magic, or shamanism, practiced by societies or individual priests, is somewhat similar to some practices among such Siberian peoples as the Evenk and the Chukchi. Variously practiced and used for healing the sick and communication with the spirit world, shamanism extends to southeastern Brazil but is most potent and most trance-oriented among the Arctic peoples (Arctic). From Mexico, and probably earlier from Peru, agricultural rites fanned out into the southeastern woodlands and the Southwest. More recent than the other rites, agricultural dance forms show enrichment from Iberian rituals.

Patterns of participation

      A distinction between performer and spectator has long existed in American Indian dance, though it is not the artificial separation that characterizes much of Western stage dancing. This latter condition has occurred only with the performance, largely in North America, of dances for tourists and during indigenous participation in folk dance festivals or regional powwow gatherings.

      Spirit impersonations, including maskings and noise, were used in widely separated areas to frighten nondancers. Specific instances of such practice included the puberty rites of the Yámana and Ona of Tierra del Fuego; among the Kwakiutl Kusiut of British Columbia in Canada, similar ceremonies were held in dance houses with a definite performing area. Except for a few specialized rites like the eagle and False Face dances, the change of roles among spectators, dancers, and musicians is characteristic of the sacred ceremonies of the Iroquois longhouses of the Northeast Indians (Northeast Indian) of North America. Outsiders are welcomed, especially into such dances for the Creator as the great feather and drum dances; and all, from the aged to mothers with babies in arms, are expected to join in.

      Among the Pueblos (Pueblo Indians) of the U.S. Southwest, the dancers remain separate because they require special rehearsals and ritual blessings. When they emerge from their sanctuaries, or kivas (kiva), onto the dancing plaza, they dance to invoke rain, health, and other blessings for the people from the supernatural spirits. After the ceremony, they often join in less-formal social dances that unite all participants and observers. Though these dances have religious connotations, as among the Iroquois, they are secular, and anyone may enter or drop out at will.

Socially determined roles in dance

      Visitors may not perceive the patterns of social organization reflected in the dances. It is clear that men or women alone begin some dances and the other sex may then join in and that men monopolize some dances, women others. Less clear are the relations, especially complex in the longhouse dances of the Iroquois, between the moieties, the complementary divisions of the tribe based either on kinship or on ceremonial function. In all Iroquois dances, specific traditions decree the nature and degree of male and female participation and whether they dance simultaneously but separately or in pairs or other combinations. The leader of the dance and song and his helper, however, must be of different moieties, whether they lead from the floor or from the sidelines. When women enter a dance line, singly or with another, they must pair with a moiety opposite, or “cousin.”

      The Iroquois moiety pattern is crossed by another comprising various public or secret societies whose members are bound together for life, often joining the society during illness or other catastrophe. These societies perform such dances as the False Face curative rites, the female mortuary dances known as ohgiwe, and the dances of the sexually integrated Bear and Buffalo medicine societies. Elsewhere, religious dance societies were based on age grades, as in the male warrior societies of the northern Plains.

      Some of these societies crossed local and even tribal boundaries, as in the extremely complex organization of Mexico's concheros, whose intertribal hierarchy runs from a capitán general de la conquista de Tenochtitlán through various local commanders and military ranks with specific duties to the attendant devil, sorcerers, and mythological figures. The concheros' claim to an Aztec heritage is given considerable credence despite some Spanish mixture.

      In the organization of, and participation in, dance according to priestly or social status, the earlier Aztec dances were images of the completely theocratic government. A far cry from the democratic customs of the Iroquois, the circumscribed ceremonial roles of Aztec actor-dancers reflected the social structure comprising priests, nobles and warriors, commoners, serfs, and slaves. The priestly and noble-warrior classes took active roles in the many festivals of the Aztec calendar, and the priests trained noble youths for the priesthood or in dancing and singing. Warrior youths performed ceremonial combat, and the warrior orders of the eagle and of the ocelot fought captive slaves during certain festivals. Both commoners and serfs constituted the audiences, the former sometimes doing serpent dances with the nobility, the latter sometimes ceremonially attacked and routed by the priests. There were age roles and gender roles as well, but the slaves, captives of sacred war with other city-states or purchased in the marketplace, as victims, had a passive role in the ceremonial activities.

      Opposites played dramatically against one another in these rites: nobles and commoners, old and young, male and female. The warrior orders symbolized the clash of the sky and light with the earth and darkness, and, as aggressors against poorly armed captives, they enacted the drama of sacrificer and victim. It was the priests and the passive slaves, however, who played the supreme moment of the ritual. The circle of social gradations was closed as the highest and the lowest ranks performed together the most crucial act of the Aztec dance-drama, human sacrifice.

Religious expression in dance

      Religious symbolism is significant even in the human interactions of the dance. Men often symbolize phallic, aggressive supernatural beings and rain-bringing deities, whereas women symbolize actual fertility. In Iroquois ceremonies, women represent the Three Life-Giving Sisters—i.e., the spirits of corn (maize), beans, and squash, with no mimetic representation. Similarly, Pueblo women promote plant and human fertility by their symbolic dancing.

      With no mimetic elements, the basket dance of the Tewa Pueblo rites includes invocations for plant growth and for the transmission of the gift of human life. The ceremony symbolizes the woman's central role in sustaining the life of the pueblo.

 In the animal realm there are also separate roles for men and women. Ottawa and Ho-Chunk women imitate the winged flight of wild swans and geese, whereas the Iroquois and Pueblo men represent eagles. Both men and women join in the mime of supernatural bears and buffalo in ceremonies of the latter tribes, more realistically in Iroquois dances. In the Southwest, especially in the New Mexican pueblos, male representations of supernatural deer show gradations of stylization ranging from the naturalistic portrayals in Taos Pueblo to the semistylization in Santa Clara, San Ildefonso, Cochiti, and San Felipe pueblos, in which sticks replace forepaws, to the abstract upright deer dancers of San Juan Pueblo and masked, unreal deer in the kachina (katsina) dance of the Hopi. The solo deer dancer of the Arizona and Sonora (Mexico) Yaqui, always a man, is relatively realistic, with mime of the hunt and killing.

      On the whole, in both Americas, agricultural dances tend to be abstract, and animal dances are usually decidedly mimetic. The animal maskers of British Columbia are terrifying portrayals of supernatural beings. In Venezuela, masked beasts of the former Maipure puberty dance, mauari, threatened a pubescent girl and her cortege and had to be subdued magically.

      Here and there the human-deity relationship is expressed in hand gestures. The Kwakiutl of northwest North America evolved codified ceremonial sign languages, as did the Pueblos, Aztecs, and Maya. In San Juan Pueblo of New Mexico, the appearance of the rain gods is heralded by two ceremonial clowns using traditional gestures. Looking for the rain gods in the clouds, one of the clowns claps ashes from his hands, representing a cloud. He looks upward, shading his eyes to indicate his attempt to see into the distance. This gesture is always used whenever the clown speaks of what he “sees.” The clowns repeat this action toward the four points of the compass, continuing to see the approaching rain gods, who bring with them the rain cloud. Similar performers may appear in the pueblo's plaza, outside the kiva. Dancing, unmasked clowns enact motions of luring rain, of sowing seeds, of digging, and of gathering the plants as they rise from the ground. Clowns also appear in the men's spring dances and in the summer corn dances. After their entrance with a large group of male and female dancers, the corn dance singers station themselves in an arc near the drummers. They fit gestures to tunes and texts that are composed for each occasion but follow a traditional pattern and trend of ideas, beckoning to the rain gods in their cloud homes in the north, west, south, and east.

      Invocations to the directions survive among the peoples originally from the Great Plains and Great Lakes areas, especially in the pipe (Sacred Pipe) dance. A solitary man offers a pipe to the thunderbird in the east, south, west, and north, moving clockwise, then to the deities of the sky and earth. Similar invocations to the directions survive in Mesoamerica as fragments of the rich gestural symbolism of the Aztecs and Maya. There, as in New Mexico, counterclockwise patterns emphasize the cardinal points.

Patterns and body movement (choreography)

      This religious, nature-oriented concept of space differs from that of Western folk and art dance, which has only geometrical or emotional significance. The geometric ground plans, however, show similarities with Western practices. The circling dances are sunwise in areas of former hunting people and countersunwise, or widdershins, among agriculturalists. Serpentine line dances also prevail among agriculturalists, notably among the Iroquois, Pueblo, Mesoamerican, and Andean peoples. Among the Iroquois, many round dances are open, with a leader, coincidentally resembling dances of the Balkans of southeastern Europe.

      Aboriginal line dances are quite simple, whether they are single file or double file. Spanish influences are apparent, however, in the elaborations used in the double-file dances of the Southwest and Latin America. Spanish and Austrian influences probably inspired the couple dances of Latin America, for aboriginal dances juxtapose male and female partners only rarely, and never in overt courtship mime.

 Characteristic of Indian dancers is a slightly forward-tilted posture, forward raising of the knee, flat-footed stamp or toe-heel action, and tendencies toward muscular relaxation and restraint in gesture. This basic style of body movement varies not only from area to area or from tribe to tribe but also from dance to dance and even from one individual to another. The agricultural dances generally are performed with an upright posture and an easy manner. Male war dances may include complex gyrations and flexion of the torso, as do animal dances. Vision and clown dances may induce bodily distortion.

      Throughout the Americas, the posture varies with sex. Women tend to be more erect than men, to lift their feet and knees less, and in general to perform in a more restrained manner. Except for the war dances, women use the same steps as men, within the stylistic restrictions. In the woodlands of eastern North America, everyone proceeds with the stomp step, a flat-footed trot. In the Pueblo area, where men and women use a similar step, the dancers also specialize in a foot lift and solid stamp. In certain dances, especially clown, animal, and war dances and in some social round dances, individuals often invent variants of the basic steps. Sometimes the innovators borrow American ballroom steps such as those of the Charleston, though they adapt them to their own styles. The steps and formations of the Indian dance, as well as the overall structure of a dance or ceremony, follow the music closely. This connection is covered in more detail in Native American music.

Foreign influences

      Among the influences from the Old World, the dances of northern Europe and the Euro-American dances have found little acceptance. The longhouse Iroquois reject all Euro-American dances. Among the few influences are some Oklahoma jazzlike, war-dance steps, an Indian two-step danced by couples, a waltz in a Pueblo social dance, and a number of couple dances of Latin America.

      Iberia, on the other hand, has not only loaned some steps but has metamorphosed the dances of Mesoamerica and western South America to Argentina. These hybrid dances reveal every conceivable shade of stylistic adjustment.

 Adaptations of mazurka, waltz, and other European dance steps occur in some ritual dances as well as in such secular couple dances as the Mexican jarabes (jarabe). The European origin, reinforced by the Europeanized music, is obvious despite the subdued manner of performance. The most significant dances are the religious dance-dramas taken over from such medieval religious productions as moros y cristianos (“Moors and Christians”) and the matachina dances—both for trained male societies.

      African American influences on Indian dance are scattered—the huapango couple dances of Vera Cruz, Mex., the Carnival dances of the Garifuna (Black Caribs) in Belize, the tamborito of Panama, and couple dances of coastal Colombia. Except for the Indian-influenced candomblé de caboclo, a ritual of the Candomblé sect (a variant of the Vodou cult), the religious dances of Brazil contain only African and Portuguese elements. Such popular Latin American ballroom dances as the samba of Brazil contain no Indian elements.

Regional dance styles

      The most distinctive tribal dance customs originated in response to animistic religious beliefs—i.e., that all objects and living things have living souls. The customs changed with prehistoric and historic migrations, with intertribal contact, and, since European contact, with upheavals in the way of life and thought. Although many dances became extinct, some survived European influences; others are amazing hybrids or new creations of the period after European colonization.

      To give an accurate understanding of the role of dance in traditional Indian society, it is necessary to examine both dances that became extinct as European influences weakened tribal customs and dances that have survived, with or without European modification.

Eskimo (Inuit)

      In some places the traditional shamanistic exhibitions and masked animal rites persist alongside Western-style square dances (square dance). The most prominent ritual figure in the former was the angakok, the shaman who communed with spirits by the rhythm of a single-headed drum and by ecstatic dancing, usually inside an igloo.

      Formerly, Eskimos held elaborate outdoor ceremonies for whale catches and similar events. In Alaska, preliminaries included the rhythmic mime of a successful whale catch, with a woman in the role of the whale. A sprinkling of ashes on the ice drove away evil spirits, and there were incantations and songs when leaving shore, when sighting the whale, and before throwing the spear, all of them songs that the “great kashak (priest)” sang when he created the whale. As the whale was towed in, Fox Islands men and boys danced, naked except for wooden masks that reached to their shoulders. At Cape Prince of Wales on the Bering Strait, the whaler's wife came to meet the boat in ceremonial dress, dancing and singing, and boys and girls performed gesture dances on the beach. Then, inside a circle of large whale ribs, the whaler's wife and children performed a dance of rejoicing. In what is now Nunavut on the west coast of Hudson Bay in Canada, communal feasting, dancing, singing, games, and shamanistic performances took place within a circle of bones or one of stones. The men's motions consisted of vigorous and angular arm jerking and jumping, the women's of curving gestures and swaying with the torso and arms, in a seated or standing posture.

Northeast and Southeast Indians

      In the area from the Atlantic coast to about the Mississippi River and across the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River, dream, medicine, plant, war, calumet (ceremonial peace pipe), and animal dances predominate. Among the Northeast Indians (Northeast Indian), mortuary and hunting rites are dominant; among Southeast Indians, corn, bean, and squash rites are most frequent. The recurrent dance pattern is a counterclockwise circling by large groups, with a running step or stomp to antiphonal singing (alternation of two groups or of a leader and a group). Medicine rites are often exclusively for female or male members of a society, but dances for hunting or agriculture admit men, women, and children. During the winter and in war or hunting ceremonies, men are the organizers and leaders; during the summer and in agricultural ceremonies, women are featured performers.

 The Iroquois continue to maintain their ancient ceremonies and a large repertory of dances and songs, including rites for crises of life and for animals and plants. They also have acquired steps and dances from other tribes, especially those of formations in two straight lines. The Iroquois bear dance combines former hunting associations both with a clan-origin legend and with a curative society. When the bear spirit is displeased, he causes neurotic spasms in a person and must be appeased in a ritual at midwinter or in private summer ceremonies. The focal personnel consist of the patient and paired conductors, dance leaders, and singers from opposite moieties. Ceremonial songs and ritual offerings are followed by group dancing in which visitors and society members participate.

      Although the Cherokee of the Smoky Mountains in North Carolina and Tennessee speak an Iroquoian language and have animal dances, they emphasize corn dance ceremonies. The Creek, Yuchi, Seminole, and other tribes of the southeastern United States greatly emphasize the summer green corn harvest ceremony, or Busk. Before the removal of many of those tribes to reservations in Oklahoma, they acquired a few dances outside their own traditions. They carried the stomp circling to its utmost development by winding the line of dancers into a spiral or even into four spirals at the four corners of the dance ground.

 Among tribes of the large Algonquian family, the stomp dances performed until a few decades ago by the Penobscot of Maine and the Narraganset of Rhode Island have experienced a strong revival. Algonquian tribes around the Great Lakes share many of the medicine and animal dance ceremonies known to the Iroquois, and the more southerly groups hold corn dances. The Ojibwa (Chippewa) in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and the Menominee and Ho-Chunk of Wisconsin have maintained a hunting dance and a special wild-rice ceremonial danced in September when this crop is harvested. These groups show the influence of the adjoining Great Plains tribes in some of the circle dances, men's war dances, and buffalo dances.

The Great Plains

      In the area extending from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and from Texas and Oklahoma into Canada, the dream dance ritual becomes part of a visionary cult associated with boys' puberty and with a votive Sun Dance ceremony. During the one to four days' duration of the Sun Dance, usually held during the summer solstice, the participants abstain from food and drink. Dancers paint their bodies in symbolic colours and carry an eagle-wing bone whistle in their mouths. To the beating of a large drum and the singing of special songs, they circle in procession and salute the sun with lamentation. They dance in place facing the sun and continue until falling unconscious or achieving a vision.

 The calumet (peace pipe (Sacred Pipe)) and peace dance originated in the tobacco rite of such northern Plains tribes as the Crow, Dakota, and other Siouan-speaking groups. Its most elaborate development, however, was in the central Plains ritual of the Pawnee and the neighbouring Omaha, Iowa, Ponca, and Osage. The war dance is organized into male war societies. Women, in turn, have a variety of societies emphasizing fertility and also perform a scalp dance. Animals are associated as tutelaries, or guardian spirits, in the vision, war, and fertility cults. The most spectacular hunting ceremonies, such as the bull dance of the Mandans (Mandan), developed from the economic significance of the buffalo herds. Buffalo rites merged with sun, war, and fertility ceremonies and spread to tribes in other areas. The individual warrior, his prowess, and dancing skill were extolled as women progressed clockwise in a closed circle, with a sideward shuffle or bounce unlike the running step of the woodlands Indians.

The Northwest Coast

      Indian tribes along the Pacific coasts of Washington and British Columbia developed masked medicine dances and elaborate fishing ceremonies, such as that performed for a bountiful salmon catch. Their two most striking types of ceremonies are the potlatch, a feast and a dance for display and distribution of the host's wealth, and the midwinter initiation ceremony. Lasting several months in a special dance house, this rite initiates young men into a ceremonial society and includes many highly individual masked enactments of totemic spirits.

The Great Basin, the Plateau, and California

      Great Basin Indians, such as the Havasupai of the Grand Canyon and the related Yumans (Yuman), developed agricultural dances. The Yuman Mojave (Mohave) stress cremation processions and ceremonies, but, like the Navajo, they also have curative and animal dances with long song cycles. In this area the vision quest ceremony is at its peak, and in southern California the Diegueño and Luiseño aided the vision by means of a narcotic, Datura (jimsonweed). Some tribes, such as the Paiute and the Coast Salish, individually danced themselves into trances. In this area arose the Ghost Dance, a religious movement whose rituals included a hypnotic circle dance that spread to the Great Plains in the 19th century. The ceremonies are frequently addressed to the spirits of the dead. There are also many two-line dances, especially among the Ute and southern Paiute. The innumerable small tribes of California shared some of the preoccupations with vision, cure, and death, as well as the seed and root gathering economy of the tribes adjoining them on the east. They specialized in elaborate masked ceremonies for the initiation of boys and less elaborate circle dances for girls' puberty rites. The more northerly groups also stressed exhibition of dexterity and costuming.

The Southwest (Southwest Indian)

      The semiarid desert country from the Rio Grande west to the Mohave Desert of southern California and into northern Mexico and the southern Rocky Mountains is subdivided into three tribal areas: the Pueblo (Pueblo Indians) farmers along the Upper Rio Grande, the Zuni of New Mexico, and the Hopi of northern Arizona; the Navajo nomads, now turned shepherds; and the desert tribes that include agriculturists such as the Pima, Tohono O'odham, Yaqui, and former nomads, such as the Apache. The pueblo dwellers of New Mexico and Arizona perform medicine rites and many winter animal and fertility dances. But the cycle of summer corn ceremonies and continuous prayers for rain form the core of their ceremonialism. The dances, organized by a male priesthood, are mostly well-practiced collective performances. Summer and winter clan or moiety groupings dominate ceremonies in alternation rather than through interaction as among the Iroquois. The most characteristic step is a stamp followed by a foot lift in a stationary line. This predominates especially in the very sacred dances held in the kivas, or sanctuaries. Semisacred dances in the village plaza add other steps and formations such as double lines, circles, and interweavings.

      The most spectacular public dances of the Pueblos are the corn dances, or tablita dances, named for the women's tablet crowns with cloud symbols. They recur at various times during the spring and summer, with most pageantry after Easter and on the pueblo's saint's day. The people pay homage to the patron saint in an early morning mass and a procession to the plaza carrying the saint's image, followed in the evening by a recessional to the church. By tradition each performance of the corn dance includes a slow and a fast dance. In the slow dance for entering the plaza, a chorus of 7 to 70 older men shuffles across the plaza, singing and invoking the rain gods. A banner bearer leads a double file of 12 to 200 dancers, with a pair of men always ahead of a pair of women. For 10 minutes they trot counterclockwise around the plaza. Following a pause, the singers form an arc, and the dancers line up face-to-face in two or four long files. They cross over, circle, and interweave in elaborate formations. Clowns meander in and out among the lines. The entire set is repeated at the other end of the plaza, and the group retires. The two moieties make alternate appearances. On the last appearance they combine, with the two choruses singing simultaneously.

 One of the most famous ceremonies is the snake-antelope dance of the Hopi in Arizona, a rite in which snakes are released in the four directions to seek rain. It includes swaying dancing to rattles and guttural chant, circling of the plaza with snakes, and ceremonial sprinkling of corn meal on the principal dancers by women of the snake clan. Masked dancers are a striking feature of Pueblo ceremonialism. The kachina dancers are sacred and represent the rain gods. Clowns with various names represent an ancient ritual heritage; in their black-and-white striped disguise of paint, they are eerie and also comical. Pueblo masking influenced neighbouring tribal dances such as the curative yeibichai of the Navajo. Curative ceremonies, with long song cycles, are emphasized by the Navajo, along with circular social dances, recalling those of the Great Plains tribes. The Apache have developed a spectacular masked dance, called the gahan, to obtain cures but chiefly to celebrate a girl's coming of age. They also have rites for vision and divination, sometimes with the aid of a vision-inducing communal drinking ceremony. The male dance style is strong, angular, even acrobatic, while the women's style is subdued.

Mexico and Mesoamerica (Mesoamerican Indian)

      The triple teams of pascolas, or wooden-masked clown dancers, of the Yaqui Indians in Arizona and the Sonoran Desert in Mexico, descend from prehistoric clown-shamans. They dance without masks in semi-Spanish style and then with masks in an aboriginal mimed deer hunt. By contrast, the chapayekas clown society recalls the Pueblo tsaviyo clowns in their antinatural behaviour and hide masks. The serious, vowed-membership society of the matachini dancers ties in with the semi-Hispanic matachina dancers of the Rio Grande tribes and of the northern Mexican mountains. These dances are related to those further south such as the various types of moriscas. A fantastically hybrid Passion (Passion play) drama is also performed in some areas.

      A few indigenous dances survive in the mountains of Mexico. The circular mitote remains the ritual dance of the southern Tepehuan and other tribes of the Sierra Madre Occidental, such as the Tepecano and the Huichol and Cora. Men and women skip in a counterclockwise circle, five circuits in one direction, then five in the other. A shaman accompanies with native songs, assisted by a musical bow on a gourd resonator. Formerly, a deer dance followed the rounds.

      The hikuli, or peyote (Native American Church) dance, held in November, follows Huichol and Tarahumara pilgrimages for peyote. The dance of the Huichol is the more ecstatic. After consuming the trance-inducing peyote, men and women move in a counterclockwise progression, leaping jerkily and twisting their bodies.

      The rutuburi is the typical ritual dance of the northern Mexican Tarahumara for three agricultural festivals—rain, green corn, and harvest—and for death and memorial rites. After triple invocations by a shaman, the women cross the dance space six times, then circle counterclockwise, holding hands and leaping with a stamp from left to right foot.

 Tribes of the Sierra Madre Oriental also engage in native survivals such as the quetzales, with great disc headdresses, and voladores (voladores, juego de los), or flying acrobats. After ritual preludes to a fiesta, the flyers first dance around the pole with their musician and his flute and tabor. Traditionally, there are four dancers, but the Otomí prefer six, including a man-woman, Malinche. They climb up a rope ladder and seat themselves on a small framework near the top, while each in turn dances on a two-foot central platform. During the flight songs they launch themselves into space with ropes tied around their waists and descend head down into 13 ever-widening circles until they reach the ground and land on their feet. The musician often performs special acrobatics, leaning back in an arc as he sits on the platform or jumping or pirouetting as he salutes the four directions. He may slide down one of the ropes amid acclaim.

      The numerous clown dancers throughout Mesoamerica are usually associated with various rituals. Some impersonate animals, like the tecuanes (“tigers”) of Guerrero state. Some, like the viejitos (“little old men”) of Michoacán state, combine native and Spanish features. Some, like the catrines, wear ragged modern outfits and poke fun at the bourgeoisie. Always connected with the dance-dramas held in conjunction with religious fiestas, the clowns (sacred clown) are not simply comics but also social satirists.

      The semiurban fiestas of Mesoamerica include three types of European-influenced dance-dramas: the morisca and its variants, moros y cristianos, santiagos, matachini, and related plays; Passion plays; and posadas, pastorelas, and Guatemalan loas. These are often true dramas, with dance and music. The dialogue may be in Spanish or in an indigenous language or a mixture of both.

      Moriscas, ritual dances deriving from ancient European ritual dances, abound during carnival (the week before Lent begins) but also occur at Corpus Christi (second Thursday after Pentecost), Santiago (St. James Day, July 25), and on other feasts. In the drama of moros y cristianos, two factions mimetically tangle in arguments and battle with the ultimate victory of the Christians and the conversion of the Moors.

      Posadas and pastorelas are danced episodes of the Christmastime coloquio de los pastores (“shepherds' play”). Most popular in southern and central Mexico and the U.S. states of New Mexico and Texas, the posadas are generally processions by city boys and girls who go from house to house asking for gifts and lodging and singing special hymns. On Christmas Eve, youngsters dance quadrilles of pastores and pastoras (“shepherds and shepherdesses”). The Guatemalan loas are short religious dramas presented at Christmas, during Holy Week, and on other holy days.

 In form, the regional secular dances are distinct from the ritualistic dances. Except for the circular mitote types, they are all for couples who do not touch. Among the best known are the jarana of Yucatán, the zandunga and llorona of the Zapotec of Oaxaca state, the chiapanecas of Chiapas state, and the huapangos (called fandangos in some locales) of the east coast. The jarabe has many regional variants, as the jarabe tapatío (Mexican hat dance) of Guadalajara, the jarabes of Tlaxcala and Michoacán states, and the zarabanda of Guatemala. Sometimes the theme of flirtation or female coyness blossoms forth in humorous interludes. Contests of improvisations to la bamba, widely danced in the Mexican Gulf Coast area, also contribute to the merriment of the Veracruz huapango.

      These regional couple dances blend European and native steps and styles and use European or European-derived instruments and tunes. Many people enjoy them and give them a native flavour—e.g., in steps or posture. The dances' European origins must usually be deduced from the style—Andalusia for the zandunga, the flamenco fandango for huapangos, and the jota of Aragon for jarabes.

South America (South American Indian)

      South American dances resemble those of Mesoamerica. Native dance rituals have their last strongholds in the jungles and highlands of the interior. Iberian dance-dramas show their relationship with those of Mesoamerica. Couple dances are prominent.

Northern South America

      In Venezuela several tribes of the Orinoco River held masked puberty rites. For example, among the Maipure and Baniva tribes, Mauari, the spirit of evil, is impersonated by a dancer who is fully covered with red and black body paint, a face-covering of puma or jaguar pelt, and a crown of deer antlers. At the initiation of a youth or girl, he emerges from the forest with maskers representing lions, tigers, deer, bears, and other wild beasts. Their bloodcurdling growls and howls mingle with the groans of the botutos, the sacred trumpets, to fill the night with a gruesome din. With wild leaps and contortions, they dance around the neophyte and four shamans.

      Ancient puberty ceremonies evidently had wide distribution, with distinctive features, in the Amazon basin and in the Mato Grosso highlands of Brazil, the Gran Chaco region of Bolivia and Paraguay, and Patagonia and the Tierra del Fuego in Argentina. They formed part of a complex emphasizing shamanistic cures, death rites, and animal dances for the hunt.

      Today the most prominent dances of Venezuela are the many versions of the morisca on Christian holidays and a dance of medieval devils on Corpus Christi. The joropo, a lively couple dance in waltz time, is the national dance of Venezuela.

      Colombia has fewer religious celebrations and a greater profusion of courtship dances. The joropo extends into eastern Colombia. On the Caribbean coast the bullerengue, lumbalu, and the circular cumbia mingle indigenous and African features. The Colombian fandango derives more from Spanish diversions. The national dance, the bambuco, originated in the Andean zone. Male and female partners, waving kerchiefs, enact a courtship mime of pursuing and flirting, combining dignity with sensuousness.

The Andean region

      Along the Pacific coast and in Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Chile, native dances have received Spanish influences. On Catholic holidays the northern Andean peoples perform vestiges of aboriginal animal rites for the vicuña, the tiger, and the condor by a solo mime within a large circle. Conveniently, Corpus Christi synchronizes with the Inca solstice ceremony, intiraymi, and presents an excuse for the reappearance of the native sun god in a huge gold disc headdress.

      The Araucanians (Araucanian) of Chile, who resisted Incan influences, preserve a shamanistic (shamanism) harvest ceremony, the ñillatun, a combination of Christian ritual and an indigenous mass dance. During interludes two men mime ostrichlike rheas, with shawls as wings.

      The highland fiestas of Andean Indians show more European influences than the ñillatun. Generally timed in accordance with Catholic festivals, the dances feature battles of Moors and Christians, clowns (sacred clown), demons in fantastic masks, and animal characters. Some dramas ridicule the Spanish. The mountain fiestas often conclude with merry couple dances.

      The coastal celebrations feature widespread couple dances of mixed Indian-Spanish origin, and the cumbia includes African qualities. The mournful huayno (or wayno), yaraví, and sanjuanito of Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia reveal Incan origins in their restrained manner and haunting music. The festive marinera of Peru and the headstrong cueca are more Spanish. The fandango and pasacalle are also at home in the urban ballroom.

The southern plains

      Argentinians have developed such ritualistic mestizo (Spanish-Indian) dances as las cintas, a maypole dance, and the sumamao (“beautiful river”) celebration. Argentina shares some Andean social dances, as the semi-indigenous carnavalito, a collective circle dance. The richest repertoire of Argentina and adjoining Uruguay developed among the cowboys, or gauchos (gaucho), of the Pampas. Their dances reveal more of the Spanish elements than those of the Andean regions. In the pericón, the dancers manipulate handkerchiefs; and in the pericón, chacarera, and gato, couples perform zapateados as groups. In the bailecito, cuando, firmeza, and cueca, they enact courtship mime with emphatic waltz steps. Other dances are urban, as the milonga of the lower classes and the sophisticated Spanish-French tango ballroom dance. Andeans and Argentinians have exchanged dances. In fact the diffusion of dances is much greater in this area of South America than in Mesoamerica.

Study and evaluation

      The secular dances of native North America, such as the Oklahoma dances, the round and war dances of Plains tribes, and the stomps of Southeastern tribes all have spread from coast to coast in modern times. The most copious and reliable materials on these and other aboriginal dances are strewn through the works of anthropologists, folklorists, and a few musicians. General descriptions are often incorporated into anthropological studies and into notes on earlier observations by colonists, missionaries, and 19th-century scholars. Mesoamerican dances have not been studied thoroughly. Essential to all such studies is an examination of the arts in their cultural context. It is equally important to recognize the dance as an expressive art, to learn and analyze the movements, and to present them in dance notation alongside musical scores. Such presentation facilitates intertribal and intercontinental comparisons. The materials must stem from fieldwork, but they can be supplemented by the many motion pictures in college archives and museums and in repositories such as the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the American Philosophical Society.

Gertrude Prokosch Kurath Ed.

Additional Reading

North America: United States and Canada

Several suitable references on dance are found in the section on music above. Additional titles of interest are Erna Fergusson, Dancing Gods (1931, reissued 1988), an evaluation of ceremonial dances of the indigenous peoples of the Southwest; Curt Sachs, World History of the Dance (1937, reissued 1965; originally published in German, 1933), including several sections on various tribal dance performances; Bernard S. Mason, Dances and Stories of the American Indian (1944), a well-illustrated work almost entirely concerned with North American Indian dance steps, forms, and costumes; John L. Squires and Robert E. McLean, American Indian Dances (1963), a volume intended primarily for hobbyist readers; Reginald Laubin and Gladys Laubin, Indian Dances of North America: Their Importance to Indian Life (1977, reissued 1989), highlighting dance of the Plains area, with discussion of the music, costumes, and religious meaning; and Charlotte Heth (ed.), Native American Dance: Ceremonies and Social Traditions (1992), a valuable collection of essays on the history and meaning of dance of North, Central, and South American tribes.Descriptive studies of the dance of specific tribes include Virginia More Roediger, Ceremonial Costumes of the Pueblo Indians (1941, reissued 1991), a superbly illustrated volume dealing with all Pueblo tribes and their ritual dress, including dance costumes; Frank G. Speck and Leonard Broom, Cherokee Dance and Drama (1951, reissued 1983), a specialized study of Eastern Cherokee dances and related ritual; Fred W. Voget, The Shoshoni-Crow Sun Dance (1984), a look at the incorporation of the Shoshone Sun Dance into Crow culture; Frederick J. Dockstader, The Kachina and the White Man: The Influences of White Culture on the Hopi Kachina Cult, rev. and enlarged ed. (1985), a survey on the origin of Pueblo masked dances and their development among the Hopi people of Arizona; Alice Anne Callahan, The Osage Ceremonial Dance I'n-Lon-Schka (1990); and Thomas Yellowtail and Michael Oren Fitzgerald, Yellowtail, Crow Medicine Man and Sun Dance Chief: An Autobiography (1991), a serious study of Crow culture.Choreography is a major theme in Julia M. Buttree (Julia M. Seton), The Rhythm of the Red Man (1930), containing choreographies and some music; Bessie Evans and May G. Evans, American Indian Dance Steps (1931, reprinted 1975), descriptions of steps, six choreographies, and music; William N. Fenton and Gertrude P. Kurath, The Iroquois Eagle Dance: An Offshoot of the Calumet Dance (1953, reprinted 1991), history, choreographies, music, analysis, photographs, and bibliography; and Gertrude P. Kurath, Michigan Indian Festivals (1966), history, choreography, music, photographs, and bibliography.

Mexico, Central America, and South America

In addition to the related titles cited above and in the section on music, other helpful works include Auguste Genin, Notes on the Dances, Music, and Songs of the Ancient and Modern Mexicans (1922; originally published in French, 1908–10), a comparison of pre-Columbian with contemporary folk dances; Frances Toor, A Treasury of Mexican Folkways (1947, reissued 1985), a volume on folklore, including the dance, by a longtime resident of Mexico; Lisa Lekis, Folk Dances of Latin America (1958), an exhaustive bibliography, with historical notes and descriptions; Samuel Martí and Gertrude P. Kurath, Dances of Anáhuac: The Choreography and Music of Precortesian Dances (1964), a thorough and well-illustrated analysis of the subject; and Carlos Vega, Las danzas populares argentinas, new ed. (1986), authoritative history, choreography, and some music.Gertrude Prokosch Kurath Ed.

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