Razor-sharp Peruvian Dance.

• Author: Durbin, Paula
• Position: Scissors dance - Brief Article

THE GALA sampling last February that launched the four-year celebration of the Latin American arts at the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., included a glimpse of the cultural phenomenon from northeastern Peru known as the scissors dance. The opening night audience saw just a few minutes of the dance that usually goes on for a week, but the condensed version was still a show-stopper, even in a lineup featuring such tours de force as Julio Bocca's sizzling tangos and the Rio-based Companhia de Danca Deborah Colker's contemporary exuberance.

Exclusively a masculine preserve, the scissors spectacle plays as a competition between two virtuosi who alternate in performance, each trying to outdo the other. Fancy footwork steps up to bravura as the dancers, shod in old-fashioned, 1950s-vintage Keds with bright red shoelaces, skim along on the sides of their feet, the heels, the insteps, and the tips of their toes. As the energy escalates, so does the difficulty of the moves. Each dancer uses his legs in a series of somewhat, rustic but still balletic maneuvers, drops to his knees, balances on his shoulders, lies on his back, all the while propelling himself across the stage without losing the beat. Eventually, they both remove their magnificent headgear, the better to toss off aerobatics or stand on their heads to display their lively legwork.

What does this have to do with the scissors? In reality, not much.

According to Romulo Janampa, director of Los Dansaq de Ayacucho, the group of two dancers and two musicians who performed at the gala and later on the Kennedy Center's Millennium Stage, the term "scissors dance" is a misnomer traceable to writer Jose Maria Arguedas. The Peruvian novelist most notably used the phrase in Los rios profundos [Deep Rivers] with reference to the dancers' castanet-like instrument that adds another musical layer to the more lyrical violin and harp accompaniment.

"They are two unattached blades of iron, which, when played along with the music, create a unique rhythm. Even though they look like scissors because of the way they are held, they are not," Janampa clarifies, indicating the respective loops through...