Swain County Schools celebrated Native American heritage on Nov. 8-9 by having Aztec dancers perform for students at the Swain County Center for the Arts. The five presentations featured Mesoamerican culture through traditional Aztec dance and music performed by Chicahua Yolotli, an Aztec Dance and Music group from North Georgia.
The four members of the group included Javier and Felicia Alfaro, their 5-year old daughter, Aaliyah, and Margaret Garcia, who is originally from Mexico.
Yolotli played traditional music on a variety of unique wind and percussion instruments made mostly of clay and wood, which included several types of drums, flutes and whistles. Their bodies also became instruments in the dances with the rattles attached to the leggings in their regalia. The regalia they wore was symbolic of Quetzalcoatl (the Feathered Serpent) and included elaborate headdresses of two- to five-foot feathers from the pheasant, the macaw and the rooster.
828.488.7843 or www.swain.k12.nc.us/cfta.
I had never seen the color green like that before.
Robert Morgan has a rare and cunning gift: he can sift through the detritus of the past, pluck objects and images from his memory (especially his childhood) and elevate them to the point where they become — in the sense that Joseph Campbell uses the word — “numinous.”
