Danza Azteca (Concheros)

Origin & history: The Concheros — also known as Danza Azteca, Danza Chichimeca or Danza de Conquista — is a Mexican ritual dance that emerged around 1522, in the years immediately after the Spanish conquest, among the Chichimeca peoples of the central Bajío. Under Spanish rule overt pre-Columbian worship was suppressed, and the dance became a vehicle for preserving indigenous religious practice inside an outwardly Catholic form; as Britannica notes, "the conchero lute and the music show Spanish influence, but the symbolism and most of the steps are pre-Columbian."

Cultural & social context: Dancers belong to an intertribal society organized as a military-style hierarchy, joined by taking a vow, and — unusually for the period — the concheros admitted women as well as men. Groups make pilgrimages to four great seasonal festivals arranged by the cardinal directions: north at the Villa de Guadalupe, east at Amecameca, south at Chalma and west at Los Remedios. Performances are preceded by processions, floral offerings, banners and spoken invocations that ask "permission" of the sacred directions.

Character & feel: Reverent and disciplined, at once a religious devotion and a communal celebration.

Technique & movement: The dancers form a circle around the musicians and captains, and progress through set ceremonial steps — grounded, pivoting and stamping — with the ankle rattles marking every beat. Regalia is elaborate: feathered headdresses (penachos), shell and mirror ornament, and strings of dried ayoyote seed pods bound at the ankles.

Music & rhythm: The signature instrument is the concha, a small lute whose sound-box is a whole armadillo shell; it is joined by the deep upright huehuetl and slit teponaztli drums and by the rustle of the ayoyote rattles. In the 20th century a wider Mexica revival (the mexicanidad movement) re-emphasized the dance's Aztec roots, often stripping back the Catholic overlay in favour of an openly indigenous ceremonial form.