notes and reflections

Just a block west and south of the Basilica in Patzcuaro is the large city plaza dedicated to Don Vasco de Quiroga, the savior priest of the city.  There are three fountains in the plaza, with a statue of Don Vasco gracing the center and largest. Across the boundry streets on all sides are arcaded walkways with shops and restaurants where you can sit and enjoy a meal or a much needed piece of chocolate cake and a cup of coffee.  On Saturday and Sunday evenings the walkways and plaza are crowded with couples and families and, as in other plazas around Michoacan, here you can see troops of dancers performing the Baile de los Viejitos, the dance of the little old men.

The dancers range in age, sometimes including at least one child as young as seven or eight, although I have seen one troop with a child who could not have been more than five.  All of them wear masks representing old men, pink as though flushed with age, with prominent noses and jutting chins, sometimes with white mustaches but generally framed with long white hair and I have been told that these were adopted to mock the Spanish.

Their costumes may vary slightly but envariably consist of a wide-brimmed, flat-topped straw hat festooned with multicolor ribbons, white pantaloons and shirts under a fringed serape, which usually is either red or white with patterns. Each dancer carries a bamboo cane which he leans on,  stiffly bent at the waist like an old man humbled by age and labor when watching the others dance, or which he carries across his back either vertically or horizontally as he dances.  At times the cane assumes other characteristics, serving as a horse or as a link to bind the dancers together.

On their feet all wear flat, hard leather sandals and it is these that make the dances what they are.  As they are accompanied by musicians playing bass, guitars and violins, the performers stamp their feet in alteration much like clog dancers or make small jumps to land on both feet simultaneously to the rhythm of the music, sometimes singly, sometimes as pairs, sometimes as lines facing one another, sometimes in a group moving in exaggerated half time, then transitioning with the music into regular time or suddenly breaking into double time.

As individual dancers the noise produced by their slapping sandals on the stone surfaces of the plazas is like rippling rhythmic firecrackers and can be made doubly so by the fact that the soles of their sandals are hinged, allowing them to  make two distinct sounds as the dance requires. As an ensemble the effect is a rolling, crackling rhythm you can feel down to your toes.

The troops perform a variety of dances and each tells a story as when the dancers move slowly in a circle, each holding onto  the end of a cane offered by another, a moving portrayal of very old men supporting one another, or as when the smallest dancer breaks into a wild, spinning dance, a miniature human top recalling the dancer's youthful exhuberance and energy.

Trying to exactly define what the dance is, is difficult.  In some ways it's like tap.  In others like clog dancing or Riverdance. But it is none of these.  It is distictively unique.  Fascinating.  Mexican.