The Archaeology Channel – Atipanakuy
This video of two Peruvian “scissors dancers” seems to be making some sort of point about the struggle between native Peruvian and imposed Spanish culture through the ages, but I’m damned if I can make it out. It’s in Quechua with Spanish and English subtitles, but the text seems to be saying something about dreams and harps and violins and a lot of poetic what-not. As the Scotsman newspaper notes in a review elsewhere, “for specialist tastes only”
as the ritualistic nature of this dance apparently involves putting objects up the nose, which is “rather unsightly.” I’m not sure if this photo from the Jose Navarro site is connected to the same people who did the Archeology.com featuredvideo, but the shoes are similar, and the quality of videos at the Navarro site is even odder. The title seems to mean “conflict” or “struggle.”
The dance takes place against a bewildering background of ancient and modern Peruvian settings, plus a lot of images of KFC, McDonalds, museum artifacts, and a group of young people sitting around drinking beer and putting tanning lotion on. The dancers appear in their backyard and caper about briskly, waving their ritualistic scissors and stamping their feet. They seem to be wearing white tennis shoes or maybe Converse All-Stars, which doesn’t seem to be quite in keeping with the spirit of things, but they probably
need good arch support and cushioning for all the Morrising about they do in this dance.
Not unlike something I saw last year in Seattle, actually, except no scissors:
