1.7: Dance in the Americas

Taking a broad view of dance in colonized North America, we will first look at Canadian and Alaskan United States the Kwakwaka’wakw and Tlingit peoples’ Potlatch ceremonial dance. Then moving to the southwestern United States, a deep dive into several different tribes of Pueblo Indians will reveal the close ties between nature and spiritual landscape for Native American Indians. Then, in Mexico we will review how dance is used to celebrate regional heritage such as the stamping fast footwork of the Mexican Chihuahua regional couples dance, or the Jarabe Tapatío from Jalisco that has come to represent national pride.

Dance is used as a cultural mechanism for enculturation, where the young are taught what it means to be Mexican, or Tewa Pueblo Indian, or Peruvian, for example. In South America, the Peruvian La Marinera, Argentine Tango, and Brazilian Samba will provide the briefest of glimpses at the rich and textured cultural expressions from this region of our world. And in understanding these dance forms,

Definition: Enculturation

The process by which human infants learn their culture; The unintended or purposeful shaping of shared worldviews by a specific group of people.

Kwakwaka’wakw and Tlingit Potlatch

The potlatch is a ritual dance performed by both the Tlingit Native American Tribe of Southeastern Alaska in the United States, as well as the Kwakwaka’wakw First Nations peoples of Canada. Important features of the potlatch include animal totems and masks that play a part in the ritual dances shared by groups in this region. The potlatch ceremonial dance, like many dances of the indigenous Pacific Northwest tribes, offer entertainments and make appeals to the supernatural powers and ancestors, as ancestral and animal characters are intricately carved onto the dancer’s totem masks.

This key feature of the dance is the ceremonial portrayal of ancestors. The Kwakwaka’wakw believe that their human family line was created when ancestors descended to earth, danced, and removed their masks to become human (Stein & Stein, 2018). Thus, dance ceremonies employ transformation masks at the climax of a dance performance, where an outer mask will spring open revealing an interior mask, a danced tradition that helps to disseminate the Kwakwaka’wakw origin myth story, retold during the potlatch ceremonial dance.

American Southwest Pueblo Dance

The American Southwest hosts the Pueblo peoples, Native Americans who live within the vast arid desert lands primarily in Arizona and New Mexico, though Utah and Texas also have some Puebloan tribes. Nature would drive their survival techniques, and nature would govern their worldview. Dance was closely tied to Pueblo peoples enculturation process, teaching the next generations about the spiritual invocation of their gods through dance where specific movements imitated the practice of planting and harvesting performed by masked dancers.

There are numerous Pueblo tribes, including the Acoma, Laguna, Hopi, Tewa, and Zuni. Something distinctive about their system of communal living in cliff dwellings made out of adobe or stone were the underground sacred spaces called kivas, a place that, according to the Hopi worldview, represents the location where the world originated. The Hopi, for example, are animistic, believing that everything in the natural world is imbued with being or spirit. The preservation of their traditional culture and religious beliefs includes dances that invoke the spirit of kachina which are performed either outside or inside kivas.

Figure 1.18. Kachina Dolls, representing the cosmic dance to bring fertility. (Levine, A. (2013, July 22). Kachina Dolls. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/F...hina_Dolls.jpg )

The kachina are spirit beings that manifest in three different ways:

1. kachina dolls;
2. invisible spirit guides who can influence healing, weather, fertility, and a successful harvest;
3. incarnate beings that appear as masked dancers.

To make appeals to the spirits, Hopi men don elaborate and symbolic headdress with ornamented costumes to perform kachina dance (Weiser-Alexander, 2021). The Spanish colonials incorrectly deemed kachina dance was a form of satanic worship because the Hopi believe the dancer actually transforms to become a kachina spirit (Larguelles, 2021). After the completion of ritual dances, the kachina spirits depart for their mountain homes until the next danced appeal for the community.

The National Dance of Mexico

One of the most internationally well-known Mexican traditional courtship dances is the Jarabe Tapatío. Some of the choreography involves steps that revolve around a sombrero placed on the floor – hence, sometimes it’s called the Mexican Hat Dance. The female dancer is adorned in the distinctive china poblana while the male is dressed in the charro suit, easy identifiers of cultural gender definition, courtship, and public flirtation, all iconic aspects of the Jarabe Tapatío. As Mexico’s national dance, the enduring popularity of this dance is deeply embedded in Mexico’s identity and cultural pride.

Broader, and more culturally indicative are the baile folklórico (or Ballet Folklórico), a singular term that encompasses several different dances that represent each region's traditional expressive dance form. Different regions in Mexico express different zapateado (footwork) and various traditional dress. Local folklore intermingled with choreographic movement imitating regional animal species were coalesced into localized theatrical productions.

Figure 1.19. Baile folklorico is an all-encompassing term for various dances from different regions of Mexico, colorfully representative of the natural setting, animals, and folklore of each unique region. (Lemad.resaeva. (27 November 2014). Baile típico mexicano. Representación en Semana de la Cultura. Danza Folkorico. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/F...r_mexicano.jpg)

Peruvian Courtship Dance

La Marinera is a flirtatious dance between men and women in the coastal, highland, and mountain villages of Peruvian South America. The different regions host variations of dancing in playful pursuit with coquettish advance and retreat choreography representing the courtship between the sexes, with solo and paired movements along with the use of a handkerchief (Shiroma, 2008). The elaborate flowered headdress with the feminine embroidered dress is contrasted to the masculine boot stomping (and sometimes horse riding!) choreography under the flourish of the male dancer’s iconic poncho.

The national dance of Peru, La Marinera is an interplay between romance and gallantry, celebration of Peruvian identity, independence, as well as a history of struggle.

Deep Dive: Syncretism

Encounters with dance forms that have new ways of dancing and expressing, where artistic interaction and exchanges transpire, inspiration for new dances take root. During the 1780s, when the gold and silver in Peru were at the center of colonial efforts in Spanish America, thousands of African slaves were brought to work the Andean mines. The African Zamacueca was danced alongside the Spanish Fandango, then the Andean people's indigenous courtship dances were added becoming the foundation for La Marinera (Novoa, 2015; Smithsonian Folklife Festival, 2015).

Cultures are not isolated. Cultural adaptation in dance can take place either through cultural contact and new discoveries, or through innovation and invention. Syncretism is a fusing of traits from two or more cultures to form something new while retaining some parts of the old in the reworking of a new cultural product. Peru's La Marinera is a cross-cultural product resulting from cultural syncretism.

Figure 1.20. Peruvian La Marinera combines Spanish Fandango, African Zamacueca, and Andean indigenous courtship dance. (Tomas Sobek. (2015, Nov 14). Marinera dance with Peruvian Paso horse, Casa Hacienda Los Ficus, Valle de Lurín (Lurín Valley), Lima, Peru. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Marinera_dance_with_Peruvian_Paso_horse.jpg )