Dancing embodied memory: the choreography of place in the Peruvian Andes

This article is concerned with dance as an embodied form of collective remembering in the Andean department of Ayacucho in Peru. Andean dance and fiesta are inextricably linked with notions of identity, cultural heritage and history. Rather than being simply aesthetic---steps to music or a series of movements---dance is readable as being a deeper embodiment of the broader struggles and concerns of a people. As anthropologist Zoila Mendoza writes, in post-colonial countries such as those in Africa and Latin America, dance is and was a means 'through which people contested, domesticated and reworked signs of domination in their society'. Andean dance has long been a space of contestation and resistance. It also functions as a repository, a dynamic archive which holds and tells the collective narrative of a cultural time and space. As Jane Cowan observes 'dance is much more than knowing the steps; it involves both social knowledge and social power'. In cultures where the written word has not played a central role in the construction and transmission of knowledge, dance is a particularly rich resource for understanding. 'Embodied practice, along with and bound up with other cultural practices, offers a way of knowing'. This is certainly true in the Andes of Peru where dance, music and fiesta are central to social, cultural, economic and political life.