Photographs by Terrence McCarthy for The New York Times
At the Ethnic Dance Festival, from left: a Chinese lion dance by Leung’s White Crane Lion and Dragon Dance Association; Samar Nassar, a Lebanese bellydancer; and Savitha Sastry in a classical South Indian dance. excerpt
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Amid such smorgasbord conditions, the range of dance sociology was remarkable. The Bharata Natyam female solo, with the performer dressed in elaborately decorated silk and her bare feet dyed red, was one of consecration. But there was nothing sacred about the 1950s nightclub behavior recreated by the Mexican women of Los Lupeños de San José. Adorned with jewelry, flowers, high heels and dresses that made much of their generous embonpoint, they and their smartly attired men were here for secular purposes: to have a good time, with danzon, cumbia and, most infectious of all, mambo, forms that developed elsewhere but quickly caught on in Mexico.
At one point, a woman turned away from the audience, arched back to display her face and cleavage to us and, with her ample bosom uppermost, gleefully shook it. The Cuban rumba looked less profane than this, but the festival’s excellent program book, full of first-rate stylistic information, points out that the “rumba was originally condemned by the Cuban elite as overtly erotic, and was danced only by marginalized Afro-Cubans.”"
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