The Matachines Dance: A Ritual Dance of the Indian Pueblos and Mexicano/Hispano Communities

The Matachines dance is a ritual drama performed on certain saint's days in Pueblo Indian and Mexicano/Hispano communities along the upper Río Grande valley in New Mexico and elsewhere in the American Southwest. It derives from a genre of medieval European folk dramas symbolizing conflict between Christians and Moors. Spaniards brought it to the Americas as a vehicle for Christianizing the Indians. In this book, Rodríguez explores the colorful, complex, and often enigmatic Matachines dance as it is performed today. In the Upper Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico, the Matachines is the only ritual dance performed in both Indian Pueblos and Hispano communities. There, the dance involves two lines of masked dancers, a young girl in white and her crowned, masked, male partner, a bull, and two clowns. Accompanied usually by violin and guitar, these characters enact a choreographic drama that symbolizes encounter, struggle, and transformation-resolution. In this classic, prize-winning ethnographic study, anthropologist and native New Mexican Sylvia Rodríguez compares Indian Pueblo and Hispano Matachines dance performance traditions to discover what they share, how they differ, what they reveal about specific communities, and what they mean to those who continue to perform them with devotion and skill.

Author: Sylvia Rodriguez
Publisher: Sunstone Press
Published: 04/10/2009
Pages: 258
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.84lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.58d
ISBN: 9780865346345

Review Citation(s):
Reference and Research Bk News 11/01/2009 pg. 94