Latin American dance

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dance traditions of Mexico, Central America, and the portions of South America and the Caribbean colonized by the Spanish and the Portuguese. These traditions reflect the distinctive mixtures of indigenous (Amerindian), African, and European influences that have shifted throughout the region over time.

This article surveys selected genres of dance across the vast and diverse region of Latin America. After a brief consideration of dance in preconquest cultures (for further treatment, see Native American dance), the narrative turns to the profound influence on dance practice of the European-imposed Roman Catholic Church and its calendar of festivals and commemorations. At the same time, imported elite dance practices became part of the colonial cultures and were in turn infused with local and regional flavours. From the 19th century on, national variations have asserted themselves throughout dance practice in Latin America and in the Latino cultures of North America. (Latin American music shows a similar path of development; a great deal of the region’s nonclassical music, both vocal and instrumental, accompanies or shares a history with dance.)

Although the article discusses theatrical derivatives of traditional dance (which are often grouped under the name folklórico) because of their visibility and importance in the region, not included are international forms of concert dance, such as ballet and modern dance. After a chronological survey of broad trends, with examples, the article focuses on individual countries. Haiti, which was colonized by the French, is included in this article because it shares important African-derived ritual practices with Brazil and Cuba and because its history is entwined with that of the Dominican Republic. Perhaps needless to say, this article can only skim the surface of such a vast topic.

From encounter to independence » The indigenous heritage

On their arrival in the Western Hemisphere in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, explorers from the Iberian kingdoms of Portugal and Castile (Spain) encountered peoples—even entire empires—previously unknown to Europeans. A few of the Europeans wrote about the music and dance practices they observed during ritual festivals among the local populations. The indigenous populations were decimated by disease, forced labour, and warfare, and their history was disrupted. In the Caribbean very few indigenous people survived, but on the mainland significant populations managed to preserve their communities.

Some early dance history can be inferred from the archives and from what seem to be continuous practices. For example, creation stories were a common aspect of indigenous spiritual practice, and their telling often incorporated dance as a vital element. Natural forces (i.e., gods and goddesses) and animal spirits were honoured or represented as dramatic actors; dance rituals were often meant to forestall or explain cataclysmic events. The great civilizations of the Aztec and Inca (like the Roman Catholic Church of their conquerors) organized time according to complex ritual calendars, and dance was essential in their communal ritual life.

The dances of the Aztec were precisely structured and executed. Priests trained young people in the movements of the ritual dances and organized the ceremonies into massive arrangements of dancers who moved in symbolic geometric patterns. Combat was a major theme that featured male dancers: weapons in hand, individuals or groups of dancers enacted struggles between gods or between military units such as eagle warriors and jaguar warriors. Dances could last more than a day to test the warrior-dancers’ endurance and commitment. In some ceremonies dancers moved in columns to represent revolving astral bodies in their annual and millennial circuits; in others they represented planters working in looping zurcos (furrows). In the danza de los voladores (“dance of the fliers”), one of the few surviving preconquest dances of Mesoamerica, traditionally four fliers (dancers) who are suspended upside down from the top of a tall pole make 13 revolutions for a combined total of 52; in the Nahuatl belief system of the Aztec and Toltec peoples, 52 years make a “year-binding,” or xiuhmolpilli.

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Latin American dance

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From encounter to independence » The indigenous heritage

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