K. Mitchell Snow provides fresh perspectives on postrevolutionary Mexican culture by examining the relationship between visual artists and theatrical dancers from the 1920s through the 1960s. Ten chapters chart visual and dance artists' diverse choreographic experiments aimed at representing Mexico onstage. Analyzing press, published essays by artists and intellectuals, and visual sources like performance programs, murals, sets, and dance photographs, Snow shows how developing Mexican theatrical dance was a highly collaborative and highly contentious project.
As for collaborations, eminent Mexican intellectuals, visual artists, and composers were inspired by dancers and supported theatrical dance developments in Mexico. For instance, José Vasconcelos, the famed head of the Secretaría de Educación Pública (Ministry of Public Education), wrote about the need “to create an art like that of the Russian dancers,” which ostensibly mixed ballet with “local color and ethnic peculiarity” (p. 24). For the 1932 ballet performance of Caballos de vapor (Horsepower...
