Choreographing Mexico: Festive Performances and Dancing Histories of a Nation
by Manuel R. Cuellar
University of Texas Press, 2022 Cloth: 978-1-4773-2516-2 | eISBN: 978-1-4773-2518-6 Library of Congress Classification GV1627.C84 2022 Dewey Decimal Classification 793.319810972
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK
The years between 1910 and 1940 were formative for Mexico, with the ouster of Porfirio Díaz, the subsequent revolution, and the creation of the new state. Amid the upheaval, Mexican dance emerged as a key arena of contestation regarding what it meant to be Mexican. Through an analysis of written, photographic, choreographic, and cinematographic renderings of a festive Mexico, Choreographing Mexico examines how bodies in motion both performed and critiqued the nation.
Manuel Cuellar details the integration of Indigenous and regional dance styles into centennial celebrations, civic festivals, and popular films. Much of the time, this was a top-down affair, with cultural elites seeking to legitimate a hegemonic national character by incorporating traces of indigeneity. Yet dancers also used their moving bodies to challenge the official image of a Mexico full of manly vigor and free from racial and ethnic divisions. At home and abroad, dancers made nuanced articulations of female, Indigenous, Black, and even queer renditions of the nation. Cuellar reminds us of the ongoing political significance of movement and embodied experience, as folklórico maintains an important and still-contested place in Mexican and Mexican American identity today.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Manuel R. Cuellar is an assistant professor of Spanish and Latin American literatures and cultures at George Washington University.
REVIEWS
Simply extraordinary. Cuellar examines primary sources as diverse as nineteenth-century periodicals, film, dance, interviews, and contemporary art performance, making this mandatory reading for scholars on Mexico now and in the future. Cuellar does a spectacular job of rescuing folklórico from its oft-maligned status as an accomplice to the state’s meaning-making nationalist apparatus: the critical exposition of this performative and dance history, alongside the ways in which it continues to make sense for Mexicans and Mexican Americans, Latinx and queer communities today, is an exceptional and necessary intervention for the history of Mexican and Latinx arts.
— B. Christine Arce, University of Miami, author of México's Nobodies: The Cultural Legacy of the Soldadera and Afro-Mexican Women
Manuel Cuellar’s Choreographing Mexico, a wonderfully nuanced study of corporeal movement in a myriad of cultural texts that feature festive performances, convincingly argues that embodiment and choreography, not just discursive, literary, and visual practices, helped shaped modern Mexico. This much-welcomed addition to cultural studies of Mexican nationalism is an admirably choreographed set of alternate readings of lo mexicano that center the human body (dancing and gestures) as a principal site of nation-formation; because Cuellar possesses an attentive queer lens that allows him to read excess, however, he is able to demonstrate that these examined public embodied performances evince cracks in our hegemonic understanding of nation.
— Laura G. Gutiérrez, UT Austin, author of Performing Mexicanidad: Vendidas y Cabareteras on the Transnational Stage
Choreographing Mexico is a long-overdue critical study of Mexican traditional and regional dance known today as folklórico…[a] fascinating and well-researched volume...Cuellar proves that Mexican regional dance is a social embodiment that at times reproduces nationalistic tropes and at others critiques them. Choreographing Mexico is a rich exploration of how bodies in motion create and recreate the idea of a nation...Choreographing Mexico offers a welcome and new interdisciplinary look at folklórico dance as essential to Mexican cultural formations. The volume will be important for Mexicanists and scholars of dance and performance. Accessible to multiple audiences, Choreographing Mexico is for anyone interested in Mexican culture and anything Mexican.
— Journal of Latin American Studies
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction. Choreographing a Festive Nation: Performance, Dance, and Embodied Histories in Mexico
Chapter 1. Rehearsals of a Cosmopolitan Modernity: The Porfirian Centennial Celebrations of Mexican Independence in 1910
Chapter 2. La Noche Mexicana and the Staging of a Festive Mexico
Chapter 3. Nellie Campobello: The Choreographer of Dancing Histories in Mexico
Chapter 4. Cinematic Renditions of a Dancing Mexico: Folklórico Dance in Mexican Film
Epilogue. Queering Mexico’s Archive: Ephemerality, Movement, and Kinesthetic Imaginings
Choreographing Mexico: Festive Performances and Dancing Histories of a Nation
by Manuel R. Cuellar
University of Texas Press, 2022 Cloth: 978-1-4773-2516-2 eISBN: 978-1-4773-2518-6
The years between 1910 and 1940 were formative for Mexico, with the ouster of Porfirio Díaz, the subsequent revolution, and the creation of the new state. Amid the upheaval, Mexican dance emerged as a key arena of contestation regarding what it meant to be Mexican. Through an analysis of written, photographic, choreographic, and cinematographic renderings of a festive Mexico, Choreographing Mexico examines how bodies in motion both performed and critiqued the nation.
Manuel Cuellar details the integration of Indigenous and regional dance styles into centennial celebrations, civic festivals, and popular films. Much of the time, this was a top-down affair, with cultural elites seeking to legitimate a hegemonic national character by incorporating traces of indigeneity. Yet dancers also used their moving bodies to challenge the official image of a Mexico full of manly vigor and free from racial and ethnic divisions. At home and abroad, dancers made nuanced articulations of female, Indigenous, Black, and even queer renditions of the nation. Cuellar reminds us of the ongoing political significance of movement and embodied experience, as folklórico maintains an important and still-contested place in Mexican and Mexican American identity today.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Manuel R. Cuellar is an assistant professor of Spanish and Latin American literatures and cultures at George Washington University.
REVIEWS
Simply extraordinary. Cuellar examines primary sources as diverse as nineteenth-century periodicals, film, dance, interviews, and contemporary art performance, making this mandatory reading for scholars on Mexico now and in the future. Cuellar does a spectacular job of rescuing folklórico from its oft-maligned status as an accomplice to the state’s meaning-making nationalist apparatus: the critical exposition of this performative and dance history, alongside the ways in which it continues to make sense for Mexicans and Mexican Americans, Latinx and queer communities today, is an exceptional and necessary intervention for the history of Mexican and Latinx arts.
— B. Christine Arce, University of Miami, author of México's Nobodies: The Cultural Legacy of the Soldadera and Afro-Mexican Women
Manuel Cuellar’s Choreographing Mexico, a wonderfully nuanced study of corporeal movement in a myriad of cultural texts that feature festive performances, convincingly argues that embodiment and choreography, not just discursive, literary, and visual practices, helped shaped modern Mexico. This much-welcomed addition to cultural studies of Mexican nationalism is an admirably choreographed set of alternate readings of lo mexicano that center the human body (dancing and gestures) as a principal site of nation-formation; because Cuellar possesses an attentive queer lens that allows him to read excess, however, he is able to demonstrate that these examined public embodied performances evince cracks in our hegemonic understanding of nation.
— Laura G. Gutiérrez, UT Austin, author of Performing Mexicanidad: Vendidas y Cabareteras on the Transnational Stage
Choreographing Mexico is a long-overdue critical study of Mexican traditional and regional dance known today as folklórico…[a] fascinating and well-researched volume...Cuellar proves that Mexican regional dance is a social embodiment that at times reproduces nationalistic tropes and at others critiques them. Choreographing Mexico is a rich exploration of how bodies in motion create and recreate the idea of a nation...Choreographing Mexico offers a welcome and new interdisciplinary look at folklórico dance as essential to Mexican cultural formations. The volume will be important for Mexicanists and scholars of dance and performance. Accessible to multiple audiences, Choreographing Mexico is for anyone interested in Mexican culture and anything Mexican.
— Journal of Latin American Studies
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction. Choreographing a Festive Nation: Performance, Dance, and Embodied Histories in Mexico
Chapter 1. Rehearsals of a Cosmopolitan Modernity: The Porfirian Centennial Celebrations of Mexican Independence in 1910
Chapter 2. La Noche Mexicana and the Staging of a Festive Mexico
Chapter 3. Nellie Campobello: The Choreographer of Dancing Histories in Mexico
Chapter 4. Cinematic Renditions of a Dancing Mexico: Folklórico Dance in Mexican Film
Epilogue. Queering Mexico’s Archive: Ephemerality, Movement, and Kinesthetic Imaginings
Notes
Bibliography
Index
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC