Paper short abstract:

The paper looks at how the Concheros' dance is shaped in part by the artefacts that it deploys in particular the stringed concha but how too it has recently been constrained by older depictions such as those of the Aztecs dancing.

Paper long abstract:

The intangible qualities of dance cannot be "saved, recorded, [or] documented," once they have been, they become "something other than performance": for the effects of dance do not last. But ritual dance in particular is always contextualized in various ways; enacted in specific places and at particular times, often in front of people but more particularly shaped by specific material artefacts that are in part what make it what it is. The effect of these various constituting factors is to turn a set of patterned body movements into something closer to performance. In this paper I will be looking at the Concheros who perform a circle dance in Mexico City which its enactors claim is unchanging. It will discuss several of the dancer's material artefacts that either shape its enactment musically (such as the concha an instrument especial to the Concheros) or materially (such as the clothing worn increasingly based on the depictions in the codices of the Aztec's dances). However, the more such depictions are seen as indicators of how the dance should be portrayed today, the more constrained in certain respects the dance becomes: some dancers even refusing to tolerate its multilayered historicity.