I approach dance not as a choreographer or as a dancer, but as a social scientist interested in how people form, contest, and communicate culture (and particularly the culture of identity). However, dance is linked in the popular imagination to anthropology more than it is actually investigated by anthropologists. This is unfortunate as dance is instructive of cultural knowledge and social practice to insiders and outsiders alike. It communicates overt information about the current state of social affairs but also tacit information about the conduct of social affairs and even the nature of human experience. However, before getting into dance...

If secular ritual is social behavior in which abstract multivalent key symbols are elaborated and exchanged, creating strong moods and motivations in people, the obvious question is, what are these symbols about? The answer has both general and specific dimensions; the latter I will explore in the context of the particular dance genres. While I will examine specific content later, there are some themes that transcend representational dance. Perhaps the most salient but most diffuse concept is authenticity. It is constructed in representational dance and sought by its audiences.

In a world of frequent transnational movement of culture, the authenticity...

K’iche’ Maya traditional dance is the first specific genre of dance explored in this book. An overriding characteristic of K’iche’ traditional dance is its multivalence. That is, it carries multiple layers of meaning, some available only to some parts of the audience. That a form of dance would have this capacity is not surprising. In the present case, a rich stock of Mesoamerican symbols and concepts, the necessities of survival under formal Spanish colonialism, and the challenges of life within the contemporary Guatemalan state shape a genre of dance particularly complex in meaning. I make decoding and understanding this multivalence...

In this chapter I consider the story of Tekun Umam and his regalia as the source and subject of discourse about nationalism and identity. So far I have explored the multivalent nature of traditional dance, particularly the Dance of the Conquest. I argued that for performers and audiences the dance provides models for interethnic relations and also acts as a storehouse of particularly Maya iconography and mythology. Here, I turn my attention to Tekun Umam and his appropriation by the Guatemalan state. I will consider how the state and ethnic Others have attempted to use Tekun Umam and the story...

Powwow is an event as much as it is a genre of dance. Indeed, Daniel Gelo defines powwow as “a festival of dancing and dance contests, feasting, gift giving, camping, and other social activities” (1999:40). With its intense socializing, food, and calendric (often annual) scheduling, powwow is a bit like the Guatemalan indigenous feria, but with dance more central. Also like feria, powwow has cultural, economic, and political dimensions. Dancers in both events face the challenges that come with being indigenous in a society dominated by nonindigenous Others. Histories of genocide and ethnocide must continue to be overcome, and the...

Contemporary powwow largely under Native control is the context for both construction of image and identity and the work of maintaining social cohesion. Fowler (2005:68), echoing Gelo’s definition, emphasizes the importance of reciprocity and sociality in her discussion of the general characteristics of powwow. However, in addition to “social cooperation” and “emotional bonding,” Fowler notes “struggles over leadership” and “challenges to the status quo” (2005:68). In short, powwow provides the context for the basic political and social functions of a human community: maintenance of social connections, resolution of disputes, and determination of group action.

Powwow also works on questions of...

Warren and Jackson (2002) identify self-representation as both a goal and a strategy of indigenous movements in Latin America. The same is true in Native North America as well. In the United States, protection and enhancement of tribal sovereignty—that is, power to self-govern—are a constant theme in Native American politics and political action (Wilkins 2002). In other words, more than other issues, collective self-representation, the ability of a Native nation to speak for itself in matters of governance and to determine education policy, land-use regulation, taxation, and so forth, is identified by Native Americans as important across time...

In Parts One and Two, I considered forms of representational dance in which indigenous peoples dance, manifesting and controlling their own culture. Here, I begin to address forms in which indigenous people, life, and culture are referenced in dance that is performed by people who are not necessarily indigenous. Folkloric dance, the form I address presently, is performed by people whose ethnic status ranges from clearly nonindigenous, to people who feature themselves as descendants of indigenous people, to those who are indigenous by their own reckoning and by that of their neighbors. What most certainly began as sometimes fanciful and...

According to dancer David Rojas, there are more than 2,000 folkloric dance groups in the Los Angeles area alone (Preston 1997). Hispanofest,¹ which regularly features a variety of dance groups, taps an extensive community of folkloric dancing in the Chicago area. Indeed, in and around Chicago, professional and amateur groups perform at weddings, graduations, and even at the mega-festival Taste of Chicago. An informal survey of folkloric dance websites reveals groups and performances in other expected places. The Anita N.Martinez Ballet Folklórico is based in Dallas, Texas. The Aztlán Dance Troupe makes its home in San Jose, California.

Immigrant folkloric...

As folkloric dances occasionally return to “the field,” so do I. The particular spaces examined here are in Guatemala, some in the community of my initial fieldwork, some beyond Totonicapán to other spaces, often profoundly interethnic. K’iche’-Maya Totonicapenses dance selected aspects of their culture for audiences of their indigenous neighbors and for ethnic Others far and near. During fieldwork, my first encounters with folkloric forms were at events, often celebrating local social organizations. For example, a course in basic English ended with a clausura party, students and teacher sharing food and drink and enjoying folk dance performances. However, the form...

A curious article appeared in the November 12, 2008, Chicago Tribune (Twohey 2008). It was a short piece, located three pages into the front section; it could almost be called a blurb. Although he had made his last appearance as an official symbol of the University of Illinois about three months after the performance described above, Chief Illiniwek was dancing again. The eighty-year-old tradition of a buckskin and feather bonnet–clad student dancing as a mythical Indian chief had returned after a nearly two-year hiatus. Students, using their own resources, had a new costume made and rented space from the...

Through stylized action and concrete objects, a ritual makes real the more abstract concepts of religious belief. Myth, of course, is the common narrative form in which religious beliefs are articulated in stories. Accordingly, myth and ritual have a complex interrelationship. They are mutually dependent; myth motivates ritual and ritual constructs and teaches myth. Rituals, unlike most other cultural behaviors, must be done and done (with varying room for improvisation) in a prescribed manner. It is myths that explain why ritual is obligatory and often why it is done a certain way. Although a myth is narrative, a story, its...

The process leading to the production of this remarkable document was a long one, involving local indigenous and nonindigenous activism and national intertribal and interethnic cooperation.¹ It was not a direct path but in many ways exemplifies indigenous movements of the early twenty-first century. Moreover, that a tribal government would feel compelled to issue a formal statement about a dancing mythical Indian indicates something of how Chief supporters reacted to Native activism.

As was the case with the appropriation of Tekun Umam in Guatemala, the use of symbolic Indians in the United States does not go unnoticed to living indigenous...

So far I have examined four distinct forms of dances that reference indigenous cultures. I occasionally have compared them with one another only to make particular points about a specific form. In this chapter, I revisit and expand earlier comparisons, gathering dances and dancers in the imaginary space of the written word. The first dance floor brings together Native American powwow dancers and K’iche’ Maya traditional dancers and their “field” forms. Next, I consider theatricalized folkloric dances together, noting how they vary from their parallel field forms. Finally, I address official—that is, sponsored by states or by institutions—dances...

Representational dance, as secular ritual, is a conceptual means to address conflicted topics. Drawing on Shay (2006), I have examined how people of differing societies express ethnicity and often attempt to control images of identity through representational dance. Additionally, representations in dance reflect social inequality. These two issues, ethnicity and inequality, are salient in the global era. We encounter Others of greater diversity more often. In the process great social and economic inequality is more directly revealed. Not surprisingly, such expression and contestation of ethnicity are occasionally subject to controversy. Three basic confusions frame the conflict over Other-representation and the...