REMEMBERING AND PERFORMING HISTORY, TRADITION, AND IDENTITY: A MULTI-SENSORY ANALYSIS OF DANZA AZTECA

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the production and reception of a modern transnational pan-indigenous ideology and multi-plex identity, through the acquisition of Danza Azteca expressive cultural practices. My research is situated within the Quetzalcoatl-Citlalli Danza Azteca group, based in Sacramento, California. I argue that through the embodied act of dancing, danzantes are able to access, reconstruct, and express socio-historical memories, feelings, and their sense of space and place, effectively creating a Mexica identity and way of life based in a pan-indigenous ideology, a decolonized consciousness. I explore the expressive cultural practices and the processes that each danzante participates in to create this pan-indigenous ideology and identity. I explore the transformative power and habitus of Danza Azteca, an emergent social movement, and I investigate its ability to act as a vehicle for self-representation for individual danzantes as well as the larger Chicana/o and Native communities in which it is situated. Danza encompasses more than just the physical act of dancing. Danzantes are engaged in the movement, music, as well as the multiple visual representations of danza. A danzante may utilize one or more of danza's expressive cultural practices to produce and express the various manifestations of their multi-plex indigenous identities. Danza is seen not as a dance or a religion, it is viewed among the danzantes as a way of life: as prayer, tradition, heritage, history and dancing identity. I argue that through the expression and reception of danza at Danza Azteca dance events, the indigenous ideology acquired, and the expressive cultural practices shared by the danzantes, grant them the power to construct, produce and express a highly politicized pan-indigenous identity. The production of this pan-indigenous identity and ideology confronts past geo-political and ethnic boundaries and is grounded in the specific socio-political relationships the Quetzalcoatl-Citlalli group is embedded in and the corresponding ideology of the Maestro of the Danza group. I explore how the danzantes connect with socio-historical memories via movement, as well as in Danza art vis-`a-vis the images and symbols on their trajes and armas. I show how danzantes employ Nahua art and symbolism as representations of their gendered, social and cultural identity. I focus upon the body as the site where memories are stored, accessed, and expressed. The performance, experience, and reception of dance is a particularly powerful site for the embodiment, expression and reception of identity and memory.