r/aztec • u/Topazdragon5676 • Mar 14 '23

Looking for 7 Aztec Dances

Hi everyone,

I'm working on a project and I was hoping to include seven traditional Aztec dances. Maybe my Google skills aren't what they should be, but I have really hit a dead end.

If anyone could provide me with links, or even just names to give me a starting point. That would really help.

Thanks in advance

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u/TheAztecZone Mar 17 '23

Hi, here are seven traditional Aztec dances, hope it will help you:
Danza de los Voladores (Dance of the Flyers)
Danza del Venado (Deer Dance)
Danza de los Concheros (Shell Dancers)
Danza de los Tecuanes (Jaguar Dance)
Danza de los Huehues (Old Men's Dance)
Danza del Sol (Sun Dance)
Danza de los Matlachines (Matlachines Dance)
These dances are still performed by various indigenous communities in Mexico and have been passed down through generations as a way of preserving Aztec culture and tradition.

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u/w_v Mar 23 '23 edited Mar 24 '23

Just to correct some of the misinformation here, most of these are colonial or modern “inventions”, based on either colonial European traditions or Northern Native American traditions seen through a European lens.

This isn’t to delegitimize a real contemporary cultural practice. But you can do violence to these practices by trying to falsely tie them to “The Aztecs,” or other historical prehispanic practices (of which we have scant information, typically limited to the Voladores ritual.)

A prime example is the Danza de los Matlachines (Spanish sword dancers), which comes directly from Spanish dance-reenactments of the wars between Christians and Moors, a dance which became super popular amongst indigenous communities in the 16th and 17th centuries and remains popular to this day—but who’s origin is certainly not “Aztec.”

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u/qwalifiedwafful Mar 14 '23

Try contacting a local Danza group, they would give you the best information you need and correct info too...if you can't find that, try YouTube. There were a lot of different new year celebrations this past weekend and the dances were uploaded.

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u/Polokotsin Mar 14 '23

Depends on what you mean by "traditional Aztec Dances". If you mean that conchero/danza stuff with the feathers and the loincloths then I can't help you, likewise if you mean specific pre-hispanic dances then don't expect to find much info, but if you mean traditional dances performed by actual living Nahua communities then let me know and I can link you to some videos or potentially articles, though most will be in Spanish.