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This chapter provides an overview of contemporary twenty-first-century contexts in which the Dance of the Old Men and Night of the Dead circulate and are performed, encompassing staged, festival, and restaurants events; tourist paraphernalia and souvenirs, photographs, advertising, folkloric dance ensembles, and filmic exhibitions in Mexico, the USA, and Europe. Introducing the ninety-year trajectory, focus is on the initial appropriation processes of the postrevolutionary era that transformed these practices from local seasonal activities to public, national spectacles and icons. Drawing on Novak, three parameters of study are outlined: the art, the institutions, and the people who participate in it. Finally, an outline of methodological processes is given, encompassing fieldwork, participant-observation, archival searches, and dramaturgical analysis.

This chapter examines the cultural manifestations of Pan Americanism through the development of Haitian folkloric dance by the Haitian-born dance director Jean-Leon Destine and the U.S. African American dance educator Lavinia Williams. As early as the mid-1930s, the Haitian government began to support the advancement and consumption of Haitian cultural arts to increase tourism to the country. The work of Destine and Williams sought to modernize Haitian dance or, rather, to discipline it, classify it, and theatricalize it so Haiti's original art form could be exhibited on the world stage and educate audiences about Haitian history and culture. The establishment of cultural institutions and the training of Haitian dancers by a U.S. African American choreographer affirmed not only the spirit of Pan Americanism's cultural exchange programs, but also the creation of an alternative world by black dancers in which African-based art forms were celebrated and in consistent dialogue with Western culture.

This chapter reflects upon the commentary of two literary observers who were also in different ways practitioners of French ballet of the 1920s and 1930s—Jean Cocteau and Paul Valéry—and, of one anthropologist—André Varagnac—who developed the notion of folklore, and folkloric dance in particular as a form of popular innovation or, in other terms, an emergent rather than residual form. With all three, the notion of the popular in dance stood in implicit opposition to the academicism of Russian émigré critics in Paris—notably André Levinson and André Schaïkevitch—who advanced the idea of neoclassicism as the dominant form of dance in modernity. While the Russo-French neoclassicists emphasized the importance ballet’s exploration of its founding technical principles these French commentators had recourse instead to the historical notion of parade or sideshow. This chapter uncovers the dual face of neoclassicism, one formalist and idealist, the other populist. Both Cocteau and Valéry have significant connections with the popular, which I propose to elucidate through the notion of parade or sideshow.

Chapter Nine provides a sense of the multifarious forms and contexts of presentation of the Dance of the Old Men that proliferated from 1968 onwards in Mexico, the USA, and Europe. Brief snapshots and glimpses of the wide range of circulating practices encompass staged events (live and recorded), and publications (literary and photographic texts). Examples include: international folkloric tours, officially-sanctioned Mexico City staged events in museums, theaters, and stadia (Fiesta Purépecha), events by the Michoacán State Tourist Board and Discos Corasón, populist publications, tourist guides, television appearances and audio recordings. The chapter concludes with a discussion of influence of the Ballet Folklórico de México in the USA, and the proliferation of Mexican Folkloric Dance ensembles as part of the Chicano/a movement

Described by critics as “stunning with an exceptional attention to detail,” Lorna Feijóo (daughter of Lupe Calzadilla and sister of Lorena Feijóo) and her husband Nelson Madrigal, both principals at Boston Ballet, trace their experiences in the school created by Fernando Alonso, comparing it with training they have observed elsewhere.