About the Book
Embodying Mexico examines two performative icons of Mexicanness--the Dance of the Old Men and Night of the Dead of Lake Pátzcuaro--in numerous manifestations, including film, theater, tourist guides, advertisements, and souvenirs. Covering a ninety-year period from the postrevolutionary era to the present day, Hellier-Tinoco's analysis is thoroughly grounded in Mexican politics and history, and simultaneously incorporates choreographic, musicological, and dramaturgical analysis.
Exploring multiple contexts in Mexico, the USA, and Europe, Embodying Mexico expands and enriches our understanding of complex processes of creating national icons, performance repertoires, and tourist attractions, drawing on wide-ranging ethnographic, archival, and participatory experience. An extensive companion website illustrates the author's arguments through audio and video.
Table of Contents:
About the Companion Website www.oup.com/us/embodyingmexico
Part One: Setting the Scene: Many Mexicos
Introduction
1. Beyond Your Expectations: Twentyfirst Century Mexico
2. Discursive Communities: Performism, Nationalism, and Tourism
Part Two: Tracing Ninety Years of Performism
3. Forging the Nation: the Postrevolutionary Years
4. Appropriation and Incorporation: From Island Village to Capital City
5. Destination Lake Pátzcuaro: Creating a Tourist Attraction with Night of the Dead
6. Authentic Mexican Dances: The Palace of Fine Arts and Across the Border
7. Films, Visual Images, and Folklórico: Belonging, Difference, and Bodies
8. Experiencing Night of the Dead: Festivals, Contests, and Souvenirs
9. Disseminating The Old Men: Mexico City, Europe, the World
10. Keeping It Local: Reappropriation, Migration, and the Zacán Festival
Part Three: Embodiment, Photographs, and Economics
11. In the Body: Indigenous Corporeality, Work, and Interpretation
12. Capturing Bodies: Postcards, Advertising, and the World's Fair
13. Celebrating and Consuming Bodies: Economic and Symbolic Production
Appendix One: The Dance of the Old Men: Choreology and Music
Appendix Two: Interviews, Personal Communication, and Institutional Support
Appendix Three: Governmental Institutions and Departments
Notes
References
About the Author :
Ruth Hellier-Tinoco is a professor in the Departments of Music and Theater/Dance at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research engages the fields of performance studies, ethnomusicology, dance anthropology, theater studies, Latin American history, and community arts.
Review :
"Hellier-Tinoco focuses on two iconic folk performances to reveal how contemporary Mexican cultural practices emerge from locally rooted traditions, individual agency, and the demands of international touristic representation. Refreshingly observant of each element in the equation, this genuinely interdisciplinary account touches concerns shared by many studying the manifestation of artistic process in the modern-day world." -- Jonathan P. Stock, Department of
Music, University of Sheffield, Editor, The World of Music
"Embodying Mexico serves as a single case study that nonetheless illuminates similar processes in other world contexts. This makes the text a good one for undergraduate as well as graduate students in disciplines like Ethnic Studies, Ethnomusicology, and Anthropology."--Brenda Romero, Associate Professor of Musicology and Ethnomusicology, University of Colorado at Boulder
"A wonderful book! With Dance of the Old Men and Night of the Dead, Ruth Hellier-Tinoco shows the insights two performances representing postrevolutionary Mexico offer on nationalism, neoliberalism, and other contemporary issues."--Helena Wulff, Stockholm University
"A solid case study of two iconic traditional practices of Michoacán's P'urhépecha region that can serve as an introduction for undergraduate students learning about Latin American, and particularly Mexican, festivals, dance, music, and cultural/national embodiment." --Journal of Folklore Research
"Hellier-Tinoco deftly and convincingly demonstrates her central thesis...This book is essential reading for those interested in Mexico, nationalism and the arts, Latin American studies as pertaining to folklore and indigenous peoples, and indigenous studies in relation to processes of cultural appropriation. It will also be of particular use to those interested in embodiment, performance studies, and tourism. As a well-performed interdisciplinary study, the
book is a solid contribution to scholarship of many stripes."--Notes
"Does a good job in bringing out the contradictions and paradoxes inherent in Mexican cultural production."--Dance Research Journal
"Hellier-Tinoco offers a brilliant analysis of layered ethnographic performance, and her exemplary methodology stands as the signature feature of the text."--Ethnomusicology
