| Dance ethnology is the study of dance within its cultural context. It is concerned with dance as an expressive cultural form which nonverbally communicates and transmits cultural values, beliefs, and attitudes. Movement and dance forms become indicators of deeper values, and in understanding the dance as symbol, fundamental understandings about a given culture are revealed.;This study also addresses the issue of alternative forms of education. It examines the festival system as a nonschooling cultural institution which has educative consequences in the lives of the villagers. The investigation focuses on the festival as a formal and informal teaching and learning device for transmitting cultural values.;The methodological approach to the study has followed the guidelines of ethnographic field research and data collection, including the use of informants, structured interviews, participant observation, tests and treatment operations on a selected sample of the population, and photorecording techniques. Two audio-visual displays--a 20-minute slide/tape presentation and a 30-minute super-8 sound film--are addenda to the written dissertation.;This paper is an investigation of La Danza de los Tastoanes, held in celebration of Santo Santiago. It is one of the ritual dance expressions of San Juan de Ocotan, a Mexican village located near the urban center of Guadalajara. The dance is one example of a larger network of ritual dramas set within the religious cargo system of Mexico. The paper describes the event and analyzes the elements of time, space, energy, and the multivocalic nature of the dance symbol. |
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