ollantaytambo
Nick White happened to be passing through Peru on his way to Bolivia where he will be working on a study of the social effects of micro-finance as it becomes more common in commercial banking.
Luckily he was able to break from this rigorous research to spend a couple of days exploring around the Sacred Valley, which, in my opinion, is as much of a canyon as Colca.
We went all over Cusco, then to Pisac, and finally to Ollantaytambo where it happened to be a festival week celebrating the patron saint of one of the churches there. There were fifteen groups of dancers all in costume and all with masks covering their faces. We were told that the groups were formed based on occupation or unions - like all the bakers were in one group. While there were both male and female dancers, I don't think that any of the groups were mixed. By and large, the dances weren't incredible or terribly compelling, much like the Matachines dance at the Taos Pueblo struggles to hold my attention. Furthermore, every few hours there seemed to be a procession from one church to the other for mass and then back.
There were, however, two very interesting events.
There was one group of dancers whose main job is to entertain the crowd, and they did this quite well - largely by whipping each other in the ankles. They would pair up, hold hands and whip each other's ankles to the point that I heard one exclaim, "ay, mamacita." Even the small boys in the dance did this, though they struggled to give the whip much momentum. Then, all the dancers dog-piled, but in a fashion like Jenga - three on the base then three on top at a 90 degree angle then more until the last few just jumped on top. Finally the man dressed as a woman climbed on top, jumped off, and peeled apart the dog pile while the other dancers acted dead. In order to revive the dancers the man dressed as a woman lifted his skirts and knelt with his crotch over each dancer's head until they were revived. That was pretty much the conclusion of the dance, but it was one that they did multiple times while we were in Ollantaytambo.
The other awesome thing was the fireworks show the night that we got there. There were spinning shooting things built on bamboo and it was all pretty fantastic. The most surprising part was when they re-enacted the Chile Peru War with a plane and boat that shot fire and sparks - into the crowd. I was protected primarily because either Nick or I spilled a protective layer of beer all over my jacket, but a monster spark burned through the neck of Nick's jacket. It was pretty funny that the whole goal seemed to be to shoot fireworks at people. At one point the Peruvian man behind me had to pat out my mohawk when a spark fell on it.
Luckily he was able to break from this rigorous research to spend a couple of days exploring around the Sacred Valley, which, in my opinion, is as much of a canyon as Colca.
We went all over Cusco, then to Pisac, and finally to Ollantaytambo where it happened to be a festival week celebrating the patron saint of one of the churches there. There were fifteen groups of dancers all in costume and all with masks covering their faces. We were told that the groups were formed based on occupation or unions - like all the bakers were in one group. While there were both male and female dancers, I don't think that any of the groups were mixed. By and large, the dances weren't incredible or terribly compelling, much like the Matachines dance at the Taos Pueblo struggles to hold my attention. Furthermore, every few hours there seemed to be a procession from one church to the other for mass and then back.
There were, however, two very interesting events.
There was one group of dancers whose main job is to entertain the crowd, and they did this quite well - largely by whipping each other in the ankles. They would pair up, hold hands and whip each other's ankles to the point that I heard one exclaim, "ay, mamacita." Even the small boys in the dance did this, though they struggled to give the whip much momentum. Then, all the dancers dog-piled, but in a fashion like Jenga - three on the base then three on top at a 90 degree angle then more until the last few just jumped on top. Finally the man dressed as a woman climbed on top, jumped off, and peeled apart the dog pile while the other dancers acted dead. In order to revive the dancers the man dressed as a woman lifted his skirts and knelt with his crotch over each dancer's head until they were revived. That was pretty much the conclusion of the dance, but it was one that they did multiple times while we were in Ollantaytambo.
The other awesome thing was the fireworks show the night that we got there. There were spinning shooting things built on bamboo and it was all pretty fantastic. The most surprising part was when they re-enacted the Chile Peru War with a plane and boat that shot fire and sparks - into the crowd. I was protected primarily because either Nick or I spilled a protective layer of beer all over my jacket, but a monster spark burned through the neck of Nick's jacket. It was pretty funny that the whole goal seemed to be to shoot fireworks at people. At one point the Peruvian man behind me had to pat out my mohawk when a spark fell on it.
posted by Scott Warren at 9:07 AM
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