Essays

Introduction

At mid-day on Christmas Eve in Picuris Pueblo, the brisk winter air heavily scented with piñon and cedar smoke and simmering posole with chile, two strangely masked characters begin their appointed rounds. Going from house-to-house and knocking on doors and windows, they cry out in a high descending falsetto "hoohoo" calling the dancers to assemble on the plaza. Men carrying ribbon-covered costumes and colored wands emerge from the warmth of their homes and begin to congregate beside the old adobe church where children are playing beside small, neatly stacked pallets of freshly split cedar. To the accompanying strains of a violin being tuned, the dancers disappear into a small room to dress while the people of the Pueblo begin arriving and greeting each other, milling about the plaza and lightly stamping their feet to drive away the cold. "Hoo-hoo" call the masqueraders again and again as they circle and weave through the gathering throng. The violinist, accompanied by a guitarist, begins to play an oddly haunting melody and the dancers, now dressed in fabulous costumes with their faces obscured by scarves, walk out in two files into the center of the plaza and begin to dance the ancient Southwestern ritual drama known as Matachines. For an hour they weave and swirl, they squat in place, then rise again waving their fan-like wands and shaking gourdshaped rattles to the tempo of the music. A young girl in a white dress dances in and out among them, chaperoned by the two mysterious masked characters, who continue calling out in their high falsetto voices. A man dressed as a bull joins them as the girl watches from a chair on the sidelines. Then, just as suddenly as they began, the dancers stop and file back inside and the crowd begins to disperse.

After dark, with the small neatly stacked piles of wood now ablaze, the musicians and dancers return and promenade in the eerie light surrounding the plaza, wending their way through the luminarias to the church for a final dance performance in front of the altar. Then it is all over. The Matachines will not appear again for another year. "What is this dance?" a visiting tourist asks me. "I don’t know," I reply, "it’s a mystery. I’ve been studying it for years and I still don’t really know."

I wrote the preceding piece nearly ten years ago and upon reflection, I realize that I’m no closer to an explanation for the Matachines dance now than I was then. I’m somewhat resigned to the fact that we will likely never know the real truth behind the mystery. It is what it is. I’ve simply come to love the dance in situ, enjoying what each of the communities who continue to practice it make of it in their own personal fashion. To that end I’ve invited some of them to come and share their interpretation of the dance with each other and with all of you who attend this unprecedented event. I hope that you will enjoy their performances and take with you a better understanding of its simple and elegant beauty as well as its importance to the communities who have chosen to keep it alive. I would also hope that you gain a quiet respect for the personal commitment of each individual dancer that is necessary and implicit to performing this timeless ritual.

I’ve also invited nine fellow scholars of the Matachines dance to offer their insights and opinions about the dance for this booklet. I asked them to write about the dance’s significance, meanings, history, origins, music, steps, and practice in New Mexico and surrounding states. I was flattered and honored that all of them enthusiastically accepted my offer to participate in this project. I am therefore quite pleased to now present to you their interpretations of the Matachines dance and I hope you find their essays as compelling and interesting as I have.

Claude Stephenson
New Mexico State Folklorist