Embodying Mexico

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.

• 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 Patzcuaro: 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 Folklorico: 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 Zacan 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

This is a long but well-researched study and an important book, not so much because it is about dance per se - although there is ample footage on the accompanying website, which is a useful addition - but rather because it is about its miliey during an important phase of Mexican social history.