Ballet Folklorico is such a beautiful cultural Mexican dance. With its unique danzas for each Mexican region, each with its own unique style. It truly is beautiful to see how dance is expressed. It’s fun to watch all the beautiful colors and the way each region expresses its culture in many ways through the astounding movements, the amazing traditional attire, and catchy music.
Ballet Folklorico goes back many, many years. Over time, traveling through different countries and getting new ideas from each one has led to the flourishing of cultural expression through dance in Mexico (Center for Latin American Studies). It has truly been a mix of different aspects that have come together to form the Mexican culture we know today, and as time keeps going, our generations have been able to keep that culture alive and continue to express it by learning these dances and performing them to the world.
Ballet Folklorico has some dance regions more popular than others. Some of the most popular being Jalisco, Michoacan, Baja California, and Veracruz. Each of these has its own amazing background, style, and music. But at the same time, all are a part of the great Mexican Culture.
The most popular region known for its most popular dance, the Jarabe Tapatio, is Jalisco. Jalisco has many different dances to different songs, but that’s the most popular and known one alongside el Son de La Negra. The Jarabe Tapatio, specifically at some point, was known to be the “National Folk dance of Mexico,” as stated by The Mexican Dance Company. They go into more detail explaining the famous Mexican hat dance. Jalisco, overall, is known for its bright colors. The attire is a gorgeous bright colored dress with a big, flowy skirt that allows for the faldeo, as they call it, to make the movement look like a big, beautiful wave, with the colourful ribbon being the main point of attraction. Alongside a colorful headpiece which goes amazingly with the bright, colorful eye makeup, dramatic eyeliner, and a bright red lip that they use, finished off with a pair of black Adelita boots. Overall, Jalisco’s folk dances represent the culture through bright colors and big movements.
Another popular region that’s well known would be Michoacan, known for its popular dance la danza de los viejitos. Its origin dating back to purepecha indigenous and as stated by The Mexican Dance Company it represents “man’s eternal fight against men”, it’s a popular dance where the dancers dress in a straw hat with ribbon coming down on the sides, linen pants and shirt with a poncho on top, topped off with a viejito mask and a cane to resemble old men. The dance comes more so from a ritual, and it truly shows the culture of how men expressed themselves and how the culture was back then and now.
Alongside those regions, there’s Baja California, a northern part of Mexico. Known for its popular dances called calabazeado that started because of cowboys and cowgirls mimicking animals in the ranches and their kicking and stomping (Dava D. Hernandez), which are typically dances to norteño music. Baja California is more cowboy and cowgirl style, with lots of kicking, stomping, and jumping. The attire being dressed as cowboys with denim jeans or skirts for the girls and a flannel shirt with a leather vest with some fringe, topped with a tejana, belt, and cowboy boots. The dances express the culture in a fun way with a lot of rhythm.
At last there’s also the region of Veracruz known for their complex, strategical dances, three of the most popular dances being la bruja and la bamba, all dances each with really elegant attire of beautiful white dresses that look like their made only of lace, very elegant makeup, gold jewelry, mandiles, and beautiful head piece, with white adelita heels, the dances often have prompts that make the dances more complex but more elegant, some use fans and in dances like the bruja they use a candle that the dancers balance on their head. La Bamba represents the union of marriage and the tying of the knot incorporated in the dance, representing the commitment, as for dances like the bruja, it originates from a story when fishermen’s wives would take them food and to light their way would balance a candle on their head, making the men call them a witch (Weebly). Veracruz represents and shows the cultures’ union and their love.
Ultimately, ballet folklorico has many appealing dances that really express Mexican culture and keep the audience intrigued with the captivating expression of the stories they tell throughout the dances and the catchy tunes that are used.