Performance
The dance represents the courtship of a man and woman, with the woman first rejecting the man’s advances than accepting them. It has a definite sexual component in metaphor, which was the original reason for the disapproval for authorities.
As the dance has lost its controversial status and gained status as representative of Mexico, the dancers have come to wear garb that is also highly representative of Mexican women and men. For women, the most traditional outfit is called the “China Poblana.” The blouse and skirt combination is named after a woman from India who came to Mexico on the Manila Galleon to work as a servant in the early 19th century. Her Asian dress was copied and then adapted in the State of Puebla, with the skirt now heavily embroidered and otherwise decorated with patriotic images. The traditional outfit for men is that of the charro, generally heavily decorated in silver trim.
The music played to accompany the dance was written to be danced to and its played either by mariachi bands or by bands playing only string instruments such as various types of guitars, harps and violin.
Read more about this topic: Mexican Hat Dance
Famous quotes containing the word performance:
“O world, world! thus is the poor agent despised. O traitors and bawds, how earnestly are you set a-work, and how ill requited! Why should our endeavour be so loved, and the performance so loathed?”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“True balance requires assigning realistic performance expectations to each of our roles. True balance requires us to acknowledge that our performance in some areas is more important than in others. True balance demands that we determine what accomplishments give us honest satisfaction as well as what failures cause us intolerable grief.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)
“What avails it that you are a Christian, if you are not purer than the heathen, if you deny yourself no more, if you are not more religious? I know of many systems of religion esteemed heathenish whose precepts fill the reader with shame, and provoke him to new endeavors, though it be to the performance of rites merely.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)