ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we explore continuity and change in Nicaraguan dance rituals from the colonial period to the present. We focus on the way in which ritual movement, as a visual mode of communication, operates as a site for knowledge transmission (as well as for the preservation of historical memory) for indigenous cultures in the region. At the time of colonial contact in sixteenth-century Nicaragua, for example, these dances served indigenous communities as part of larger healing rituals and ceremonial cycles, which incorporated symbolic postures as well as elements from the natural world in an effort to maintain equilibrium between the gods and humans on earth. The maintenance of this sacred equilibrium via ritual practices such as dance is key to understanding the “multiple therapy” that is characteristic of indigenous medicine, emphasizing the interconnectedness between spiritual and physical aspects of health and wellness. 1 As Guillermo Bonfil Batalla concludes in México Profundo, this concept of “multiple therapy” is predicated upon a merging of spirituality and physicality that ultimately blurs the boundaries between them. In his analysis, “What we call religion and what we call medicine are intertwined in many ways, so the distinction in erased” (1996: 35). This intertwining of religion and healing in ritual practices is key to understanding the ways in which dance in the colonial period functions as a form of indigenous medicine, i.e. a healing mechanism that operates in and through spiritual, physical and cultural modes.
