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This chapter uses the Peruvian scissors dance, an acrobatic ritual dance from one of the most marginalized regions of the Peruvian Andes, as a case study to investigate the cultural agency of virtuosic indigenous performers on the global stage. The scissors dance is a hybrid perform- ance genre traditionally performed in local festivities, enacting a mys- terious stock character engaged in a diabolic pact. The dancers are male specialists who perform in intense competitions of complex dance steps, acrobatics, and demonstrations of endurance and the ability to withstand pain. As a result of the displacements generated by urban migration, political violence, and globalization, the scissors dance has recently transformed into a primarily cosmopolitan Andean perform- ance form. Once repudiated by colonial elites because it represented the survival of precolonial indigenous rituals, the scissors dance has become one of the most visible emblems of Andean identity on urban and transnational stages.

This chapter considers the staging of the scissors dance as commodi- fied spectacle as a significant cultural phenomenon that contributes to changing articulations of Andean subjectivity, not simply – as anthro- pological studies suggest – as a degradation of an authentic ritual (Arce Sotelo: 13; Nuñez Rebaza: 48). I ask: What does the staging of the dance as urban and transnational spectacle do to and for marginalized Andean subjects? What novel forms of indigenous subjectivity and citizenship do highly skilled Andean performers enact and model as they inhabit the role of the Andean Other on the global stage? I argue that con- temporary scissors dancers engage in strategic autoexoticism, perform- ing the role of the hyperreal Indian on transnational stages in order to

6 The Urbanization and Transnational Circulation of the Peruvian Scissors Dance Jason Bush

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acquire the social capital of global artists and cultural entrepreneurs, thus repositioning the opposition between indigeneity and modernity within Latin American public discourse. While neoliberal multicultur- alism circumscribes the potential force of these new articulations of indigenous citizenship, performing spectacular indigeneity has enabled the performers to become both problematic and productive models for the development of modern Andean subjectivities in a rapidly globaliz- ing world.

Constructing an Andean icon

The scissors dance is a masculine Andean festival dance from the regions of Ayacucho, Huancavelica, and Apurimac, making up one of the poor- est and most marginalized areas of Peru. The dance gets its name from the two independent steel blades the dancers hold in their right hands in the style of scissors (see Figure 6.1). These ‘scissors’ act as percus- sion instruments that mark the rhythm of the dance with a distinctive metallic sound. A harpist and a violinist accompany each individual

Figure 6.1 Scissors dancer Paccha Ccapari dancing in a festival in the town of Cabana Sur, Ayacucho, Peru. Photo by Jason Bush

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dancer. The dancers and musicians are paid specialists contracted by the sponsors of local festivals related to the agricultural cycle and the Catholic liturgical calendar; these festivals typically last five to seven days, and the dancers perform for the duration with very little rest. They compete against each other in intense one-on-one battles known as atipanakuy, where they try to outdo their opponents through the elaboration of a partially improvised yet rigorous and complex musical and choreographic repertoire. The atipanakuy terminates in pruebas de valor (‘tests of bravery’), through which the dancers demonstrate their extraordinary endurance and ability to withstand pain as they perform a series of grotesque stunts. They pierce their skin with cactus, knives, and broken glass, swallow swords, and eat live frogs and snakes (see Figure 6.2).

A corpus of myths claims that scissors dancers enter into pacts with the devil in order to gain mysterious powers and demonstrate superhu- man physical abilities. Ethnographic narratives tend to construct these pacts as a mask for a surviving connection between the scissors dance and the ancient indigenous deities known as huacas. Anthropologists

Figure 6.2 Scissors dancer Kusi Kusi performing pruebas de valor in a festival in Lima, Peru. Photo by Jason Bush

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have linked the origins of the dance to the sixteenth-century spiritual revival movement known as the Taki Onqoy (‘dancing sickness’). During this emblematic movement of Andean cultural resistance (1563–73), spe- cialized oracular mediums possessed by the huacas performed ecstatic dances and preached the expulsion of all Spanish and Catholic prac- tices from the Andean community. Recently, this apparent genealogical link between the Taki Onqoy and the contemporary scissors dance has become an unquestioned myth of origin, adding to the dance’s aura as an icon of Andean authenticity and cultural resistance (Millones, Taki Onqoy: 60–3).

The scissors dance first entered the national imaginary through the work of canonical Peruvian intellectual José María Arguedas. Arguedas repeatedly evoked the dance as an emblem of the vitality and crea- tivity of postcolonial Andean popular culture in literary and anthro- pological writings, and staged folklore performances in Lima (‘Notas Elementales’). By the 1960s, Arguedas increasingly viewed the dance as a model for his own changing performance of self as a hybrid Andean intellectual and modern indigenous subject. He unforgettably drama- tized the death of a legendary scissors dancer in his most famous short story, ‘La Agonia de Rasu Niti’ (1962), which enacted a felicitous transfer of cultural knowledge from a traditional, rurally based Andean culture to a modern one that formed the building blocks for his utopian vision of a new Peru.

After Arguedas’s death, the spaces of scissors dance performance rapidly shifted from the rural provinces to urban centers, increasing the visibility of the performance practice the author had already made famous. During Arguedas’s lifetime, rapid urbanization and migration had already begun to unsettle historical divisions of power between the indigenous Andean countryside and Westernized coastal cities in Peru. This process greatly accelerated during the populist military govern- ment of Juan Velasco Alvarado (1968–75), which followed Arguedas’s lead in establishing the scissors dance as an icon of a renovated national popular repertoire that contested the Westernized coastal culture of the dominant Creole elite. During the same period, urban Andean migra- tion to Lima greatly intensified, transforming the formerly elite capital city into a dynamic and chaotic postcolonial ‘megacity’ (Matos Mar: 41–50). By the 1970s, family and regional networks of migrants were growing exponentially and the presence of Andean migrants in Lima reached a critical mass. Taking advantage of the relative tolerance of the Velasco government and their newfound strength in numbers, pro- vincial migrants organized large-scale land invasions on unoccupied

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territories on the outskirts of the city. Before long the traditional districts of metropolitan Lima were surrounded as the new settlements in the southern, eastern, and northern cones were rapidly incorporated into the city’s urban infrastructure. These new settlements both emerged out of and encouraged the dynamism, creativity, and entrepreneurial- ism of Lima’s growing informal economy. The informal economy also produced a robust urban Andean culture industry linking urban repro- ductions of rural festivals to commercial spectacles, musical recordings, and radio and television programs directed towards urban Andean audiences (Alfaro: 5–8).1

These developments enabled the scissors dance to reach new audi- ences and encouraged aesthetic renovations of the form. By the late 1970s, a new generation of scissors dance performers in Lima began to reinvent traditional and choreographic repertoires according to hybrid cosmopolitan aesthetic values borrowed from a variety of urban and global sources, including martial arts films, the circus, sophisticated folk ballets, and eventually hip hop dance (Nuñez Rebaza: 91–4). As these enterprising young performers increasingly incorporated the dance into commercial spectacles directed towards the growing urban Andean public in Lima, emphasis shifted from knowledge of complex choreographic sequences to the display of acrobatic virtuosity, appealing to audiences with no previous knowledge of the dance. Anthropologists frequently complain that these transformations erode the authentic- ity of an emblematic Andean performance practice. However, aesthetic transformation began as a mostly organic response to dislocation and urban poverty at the same time as urban renovations remained linked to rural performance contexts through the increasing mobility of the performers.

During the 1980s, developing links and mutual influence among rural and urban forms of scissors dancing were interrupted by large-scale political violence, as the conflict between Maoist Shining Path gueril- las and the Peruvian military centered on the region where the scis- sors dance was traditionally performed. Caught between the inflexible fundamentalism of the Shining Path and the indiscriminate violence of the military, rural villagers largely took refuge in Lima and other urban areas. In many cases, entire towns and villages were abandoned and rural festivities ceased to be celebrated for the better part of a dec- ade (Nuñez Rebaza: 17–20). Seemingly overnight, the primarily rural festival dance practiced for generations by hereditary specialists trans- formed into an almost exclusively urban performance practice located in the spectacles of the Andean culture industries in Lima. The political

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violence dramatically accelerated the aesthetic reinvention of the form according to cosmopolitan values of spectacular acrobatic virtuosity and encouraged the transfer of leadership from hereditary elders to young practitioners more competent in modern and urban lifestyles.

In this fraught historical moment of crisis and rapid transformation, Andeanist ethnographers paid increasing attention to the scissors dance (see, for example, Nuñez Rebaza). They urgently developed a narrative that mourned the passing of an authentic ritual into mere spectacle and entertainment. Ethnographers increasingly mythologized the ori- gins of the dance in pre-Columbian shamanic rituals; their framework constructed anthropological knowledge rather than the practitioners themselves as the arbiter of authenticity, positioning ethnographers as ‘good’ outsiders solely concerned with the protection of traditional Andean culture (Starn: 65–6). Denying the agency of urbanizing per- formers, ethnographers portrayed them as the exploited victims of cap- italist entrepreneurs and Western hegemony. Yet, as García Canclini suggests, anthropologists often have more difficulty entering moder- nity than the supposedly ‘primitive’ people they study (170). I contend that urban scissors dance practitioners of the 1970s and 1980s sought new spaces of recognition and social mobility in metropolitan specta- cles and on the folkloric stage, refashioning the dance as a cultural form that expressed the experience of urban poverty and violent dislocation in which they lived. Moreover, the ethnographic construction of the dance’s ritual essence as a concise and appealing narrative of authen- ticity and cultural survival has endowed the form with the symbolic capital and exhibition value that enables the very commodified repre- sentations ethnographers condemn.

Neoliberal multiculturalism and spectacular indigeneity

By the end of Peru’s internal conflict in 1993, the scissors dance had transformed into a spectacular form of urban performance showcasing incredible acrobatic virtuosity. Combining their skill with appealing ethnographic narratives of Andean authenticity and cultural survival, urbanized scissors dancers were well positioned to take advantage of increasing global interest in indigenous culture in the wake of the quin- centennial of Columbus’s ‘discovery’ of the Americas. International experiences further consolidated the leadership of the most successful members of the generation of performers who initiated the urban rein- vention of the form in the late 1970s and early 1980s. They mobilized a cosmopolitan entrepreneurialism and acumen for publicity by linking

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themselves to networks of ethnographers, journalists, development NGOs, international folklore festivals, and transnational indigenous organizations. Performing in short theatrical presentations for tourists and international exhibitions, these performers cast themselves in the idealized role that Alcida Ramos identifies as ‘the hyperreal Indian’, constituted by commodified images of the model Indian produced for Western consumption (Ramos: 276). While such images may be exoti- cist fantasies, they can also be useful resources for indigenous artists to acquire new spaces of recognition in cosmopolitan public spheres. Scissors dance performers with international profiles have succeeded in reorienting the aesthetic values of the dance toward increasing acro- batic virtuosity and competence in theatrical performances that draw on discourses of globalized indigeneity rather than on traditional musi- cal and choreographic knowledge.

The increasing presence of the scissors dance on the global stage directly parallels the ascent of neoliberal multiculturalism as a hegem- onic mode of governance in post-conflict Peru. Charles Hale has argued that neoliberalism’s cultural project ‘thrives on the recognition of cul- tural difference and by extension on high-stakes distinctions between those cultural rights that deserve recognition and those that do not’ (36). After defeating the Shining Path insurrection, the soft authoritari- anism of the Fujimori regime (1990–2000) formalized these distinctions by pushing through a new constitution that granted recognition of the cultural rights of various marginalized ethnic groups in Peru at the same time as it dismantled long-standing protections of collective land rights for indigenous and peasant communities and neutered the rights of labor organizations (Millones, Perú Indigena: 171–4). In order to gain favor with marginalized Andean subjects and revive Peru’s dormant tourist industry, the Fujimori administration frequently recognized a domesticated representation of indigenous culture that Hale calls ‘the permitted Indian’, an ‘identity category that results when neoliberal regimes actively recognize and open space for collective indigenous presence, even agency’, while preserving the unquestioned hegemony of neoliberal governance (Hale and Millamán: 284).

The hegemony of neoliberal multiculturalism in Peru deepened and intensified after the collapse of Fujimori in 2000; Andean-born and Stanford-educated economist Alejandro Toledo won a close election by casting himself as a modern Inca emperor. In a spectacular perform- ance of Peru’s impressive cultural diversity, Toledo staged his ceremonial inauguration at the ruins of Machu Picchu. The new president appeared in the costume of the Inca Pachacuteq and declared a ‘new era’ in Peru’s

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democracy, as an Andean shaman performed healing rituals and blessed the newly inaugurated leader (Vich, ‘29 de Julio de 2001’: 452–3). The ceremony ended as thousands of magnificently costumed folkloric danc- ers came together in the ancient citadel’s central square in a symbolic display of unity in diversity. With Toledo as the central protagonist, the event offered disenfranchised Andean subjects the opportunity for participation in a renovated national community by performing their cultural difference, aestheticized as attractive commodities for the glo- bal stage. The event encapsulated the Toledo administration’s mode of recognizing multicultural rights at the same time as it promoted Peru as a neoprimitive destination for global tourism in a coordinated strategy of nation branding (Vich, ‘Magical Mystical’: 7–9). That many scissors dance performers had already found success performing exotic Andean Otherness on the global stage made the dance a particularly attractive commodity in the state’s newfound efforts to promote itself as a global brand; in addition to performing in well-known international folklore festivals and multicultural exhibitions, contemporary scissors dancers were increasingly cast in print and television advertisements and high- budget theatrical spectacles staged for tourism fairs in Europe and for Toledo’s important diplomatic visits to First World nations.

I suggest that we can view the use of the scissors dance by neoliberal institutions as a way to mark the Peruvian brand as another permutation of ‘the permitted Indian’, a ‘subject position created via state and cor- porate patronage’ (Tucker: 392) that disciplines indigenous culture into ‘a reified postcard image’ (Rivera Cusicanqui: 143). As Hale has argued, ‘the leading edge of neoliberalism’s cultural project is not radical indi- vidualism, but rather the creation of subjects who govern themselves in accordance with the logic of globalized capitalism’ (220). Numerous scholars have noted that the folkloric stage functions as a theatrical dis- ciplinary system that invents and codifies a safe and imaginary Indian for Western consumption (Cadena: 272–305; Shea Murphy: 53–80). Performing on international and tourist stages has instilled notions of professional discipline on the performers; the younger, more cosmopoli- tan performers frequently distinguish themselves from their less urban- ized predecessors by emphasizing their competence in ‘civilized’ codes of behavior, such as hygiene, punctuality, and the artistic unity of their presentations. At the same time as they confer an abstract authority upon the performance knowledge of their ancestors, these performers patronizingly refer to less cosmopolitan practitioners using familiar and negative stereotypes situating indigenous people as ignorant, unclean, and childlike. They partake in hegemonic notions that frame education

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and urban lifestyles as legitimate means to construct hierarchies over those more ‘Indian’ than themselves. Similar strategies are frequently used to distinguish urbanized mestizo performers of indigenous folklore on metropolitan stages from their less ‘civilized’ rural indigenous coun- terparts in Peru (Cadena: 272–305; Mendoza: 48–83). Yet unlike earlier folklore performers, contemporary scissors dancers continue to perform in a variety of contexts for different audiences, both elite and popular. Furthermore, they do not construct themselves as mestizos, but instead utilize the tropes of indigenous authenticity bestowed upon the scissors dance by Andeanist ethnographers to fashion themselves as modern and dignified indigenous subjects according to the newly valorized role of the permitted Indian, as they implicitly reject its less civilized Indian Other.

Despite the disciplinary implications of contemporary scissors danc- ers modeling themselves according to the domesticated image of the permitted Indian, I contend that they exhibit what Doris Sommer calls ‘cultural agency’ by ‘exploring the cracks in existing regimes of rep- resentation’, as they provide ‘dangerous supplements that add angles for intervention and locate room for maneuver’ (3). As performers who enact spectacular indigeneity as a kind of stock character in front of a global audience, contemporary scissors dancers embody the dialecti- cal relationship between actor and role that defines theatricality. They thus possess what Hastrup calls ‘double-agency’, in which the identi- ties of the actor and character can neither be entirely conflated nor separated (30). While the character the scissors dancer performs on the global stage approximates hyperreal images of exotic indigeneity rooted in ‘magical’ Otherness, the dancers also maintain a distinct identity as modern and cosmopolitan artists. In my interviews with them, performers frequently alluded to these distinct identities as a way of explaining their craft, yet they did not conceive the stock character of the mythical scissors dancer they portray as a mere fiction. Rather, they frequently explained that the character is a model for an authentic indigenous self they could approach, but never truly attain through the fleeting ephemerality of embodied performance. I argue that the simultaneous flexibility and intimacy between spectacular and lived subjectivities conceived by the urbanized Peruvian scissors dancer ena- bles this cultural agency. By mobilizing their global visibility as a form of cultural capital within Peru, the dancers have sought recognition and social mobility as cosmopolitan artists, entertainment entrepre- neurs, and even as leaders in indigenous cultural revival movements. Thus, they have fashioned themselves not only as commodified objects

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of multicultural spectacle, but also as models for new articulations of cosmopolitan Andean identity that merge global discourses of indige- neity with the emerging ethnic narrative of the ‘triumph of the pro- vincial cholo middle-class’ within Peru (Alfaro: 12). In the remainder of this chapter, I analyze the strategies that different cosmopolitan scissors dance performers have pursued in order to situate their cultural agency within the broader contours of national and transnational representa- tions of Andean indigeneity.

Maximum exponents of the scissors dance

As I have written elsewhere, the Peruvian television network Frequencia Latina aired a highly successful mini-telenovela in 2008, entitled El Gran Reto (‘The Great Challenge’), dramatizing the lives of high-profile scissors dancers (Bush, ‘El Gran Reto’). The six-week mini-series portrayed the scissors dance as an embodiment of the values of Andean tradition and spirituality that acts as the moral compass, guiding the social mobility of urbanizing Andean migrants in the construction of a new Peruvian community. The participation of globally recognized scissors dancers Romulo Huamaní Janampa and Damián de la Cruz Ccanto, who go by the artistic pseudonyms Qori Sisicha (Little Golden Ant) and Ccarccaria (Incestuous Demon) respectively, was instrumental to the popular suc- cess of El Gran Reto. They served as principal advisors in the conception of the story and scriptwriting process, trained the actors in the basic sequences of the dance, and replaced them as stand-ins for more dif- ficult maneuvers. They lent their names and public personas to two of the principal characters of the series, played by veteran Peruvian actors Pold Gastello and Gerardo Zamoa. Most importantly, they served as the public faces of the show in various cross-promotional events, appear- ing on popular television variety programs, in radio interviews, and in newspaper profiles. By participating in El Gran Reto, Qori Sisicha and Ccarccaria sought to enhance their own brand identities within Peru, leveraging the cultural capital produced by their international experi- ence to achieve celebrity status in their own country. These performers’ celebrity brands have become performances in themselves, positioning them as both living embodiments of a ‘millennial’ Andean tradition and cosmopolitan artists and entrepreneurs who represent the triumph of the emergent Andean cholo.

Both Qori Sisicha and Ccarccaria were among the earliest generation of scissors dance performers to learn the dance and recreate its aesthetic repertoires in Lima during the 1980s. Qori Sisicha is a representative of

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the Ayacucho style, first coming to prominence as a performer for the theatrical troupe Maximo Damián y sus Danzantes de Tijeras in 1980. Ccarccaria is a representative of the Huancavelica style, who rose to prominence in the 1980s as a child performer in the theatrical troupe El Corazon de Mercurio, later forming his own group, Los Galas de Villallacta, with his two brothers. In 2000 Qori Sisicha and Ccarccaria collaborated for the first time on a project sponsored by the Instituto Nacional de Cultura to construct a national school of scissors dancing. The course lasted for about half a year, attracting numerous theatre art- ists, interested urban Andean youth, and even a German tourist. The experience left Qori Sisicha and Ccarccaria hungry to build their own institution as a center for the teaching and dissemination of the dance. After this experience, the two enterprising scissors dancers understood the only way to achieve their goal of raising the state and corporate sponsorship necessary to build their institution was to market them- selves as ‘the maximum exponents of the scissors dance’ (Raymundo, ‘Las Tijeras’). They contracted veteran journalist Jesús Raymundo as their publicist; he helped them construct publicity narratives that linked per- sonal triumph to cultural reaffirmation and the reconquest of national space. His approach was three-pronged (Personal interview).

First, newspaper profiles and television appearances depicted both dancers as the legitimate heirs of a ‘magical’ and ‘millennial’ tradi- tion (Raymundo, ‘Las Tijeras’, ‘Danzante’, ‘Con los Apus’; Torres). For instance, the dancers repeatedly exclaim, ‘They say we have a pact with the devil, but that is not true. What we do is connect to the pachamama [earth] and with ancient Gods. We dansaq [scissors dancers] are like priests or shamans’ (qtd in Torres). Second, Raymundo emphasized the dancers’ international recognition and placed their biographies into a familiar rags-to-riches narrative framework. Finally, publicity narratives portrayed the dancers as the most legitimate authorities in charge of transmitting the dance to the next generation of performers. Although actual stories of how they learned the dance are significantly more complicated, Qori Sisicha and Ccarccaria perform the role of idealized ritual masters who maintain a close relationship with their pupils. This performance locates their authority in ritual knowledge, the mastery of ‘complete’ choreographic repertoires, and their cosmopolitan knowl- edge linking them to various networks of multicultural recognition in both national and transnational public spheres.

With the aid of Raymundo, Qori Sisicha and Ccarccaria have pro- moted themselves as entertainment entrepreneurs who produce com- mercial spectacles for a mass urban Andean audience. Beginning in

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the 1980s, Qori Sisicha pioneered the now common practice of staging spectacular commercial events to celebrate his artistic anniversary; the events include a scissors dance competition in the afternoon and a concert of folkloric singers in the evening. Since 2005, Qori Sisicha and Ccarccaria have staged such events much more frequently than once a year, seeking to attract a larger and less localized public by contracting the biggest stars in the commercial Andean folklore music industry, such as Dina Paucar and Sonia Morales, to participate. They initially found it challenging to find the right balance between cater- ing to the public’s desire to see the folkloric singers and promoting the scissors dance as an appealing spectacle in itself, but their high-profile role in the production and marketing of El Gran Reto offered a solu- tion. Capitalizing on their newfound visibility and the ratings success of the series, Qori Sisicha and Ccarccaria staged public spectacles that promised El Gran Reto en Vivo (‘Live’) each weekend in different parts of the outskirts of Lima during the run of the six-week program. After the run ended, they embarked on a national tour to provincial cities throughout Peru. While these spectacles followed the format of pre- vious events, I observed that as they went on the prominence of the star folkloric singers decreased. With the competition of the young scissors dance performers, the ten-minute demonstration of the supe- rior skills of Qori Sisicha and Ccarccaria in a short mock competition, and the appearances and autograph-signing sessions by the program’s lead actors, the scissors dance and its iconic image increasingly took center stage. During many of these events, I observed that young chil- dren from Andean migrant families who idolized virtuosic dancers as heroes became the core audience; not only did the children request autographs from both the actors and the scissors dancers, but they often unskillfully attempted to imitate the movements of the dance. In this respect, participating in El Gran Reto did allow Qori Sisicha and Ccarccaria to translate their global visibility into national celebrity and transform the regional indigenous cultural form into a national cultural phenomenon.

As the national attention the two celebrity performers gained from El Gran Reto began to die down, they turned to various strategies to remain in the spotlight. Most notably, they sought to continue to use their inter- national recognition as a way to gain favor with their Peruvian audi- ence, mostly made up of the urban poor. In November 2008, Ccarccaria and Qori Sisicha performed for esteemed international business and political figures at the Asia-Pacific Economic Coalition (APEC) Summit in Lima. In a piece entitled ‘Ccarccaria: El Rey de APEC’ (‘The King

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of APEC’) and published in a popular tabloid, Ccarccaria exclaimed, ‘It was a beautiful ceremony of Peruvian music and dance. The heads of state applauded the scissors dance with great force. I saw President García explaining the significance of the dance to the President of the United States, George Bush’; he later added, ‘foreigners value our Andean dances’ (‘Ccarccaria Sera’). Ccarccaria often recruited me in his attempts to enhance his image in front of an urban Andean public. During the final weeks of my fieldwork, he requested that I award him with a trophy of recognition as a national treasure of Peruvian culture at his anniversary event in May 2009. He took care of the trophy him- self. What mattered to him was my performance as a representative of the symbolic capital of First World academia. I ceremonially conferred the trophy upon this indigenous Andean artist in front of a mostly Andean audience.

Global ambassadors of Peruvian indigeneity2

While they remain the dominant figures of contemporary scissors dance performance, Qori Sisicha and Ccarccaria are not the only per- formers who dance in global and urban spectacles. The theatrical troupe Los Hermanos Chavez (‘The Chavez Brothers’) has rivaled its more famous counterparts in one area by concentrating its efforts on staging exquisitely choreographed theatrical presentations for interna- tional festivals and touristic stages in Lima. The group takes a great deal of pride in having created the most stable, organized, and professional cultural institution dedicated exclusively to the scissors dance, along- side the most sophisticated website of all contemporary scissors dance groups. Surprisingly, they position their mastery of quite tame yet visu- ally appealing spectacles as a critical response to globalization. They model their performance practices on a consistent discourse centered on notions of artistic excellence, collective theatre training, balletic choreography, and a unified artistic philosophy. They claim that these values enable them to address their work to a more cultured global audi- ence in order to show the world that indigenous Andean performers can produce a sophisticated artistic product. Moreover, they also claim that their disciplined self-education and cohesiveness as a collective unit serve as antidotes to the habits of overconsumption and alienated individualism imposed by dominant market forces.

Los Hermanos Chavez was founded by four brothers: Gabriel, Victor, Fredy, and Arturo. Unlike the vast majority of scissors dance perform- ers, the Chavez brothers came from a relatively wealthy family among

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the provincial elite of Pampas, the capital of the province of Tayacaja in Huancavelica. They did not come from a line of artists, but they were aficionados of the dance from childhood. Between 1980 and 1985, each brother moved separately to Lima to pursue his secondary educa- tion. At the time, the community of scissors dance performers from Huancavelica in Lima was relatively small. The brothers were imme- diately accepted by elder leaders, who supported their nascent efforts to learn the dance. The Chavez brothers encountered resistance, how- ever, from younger performers with family heritages of scissors dance performance, led by Ccarccaria. Thus, they positioned themselves as scissors dancers both sustained and marginalized by the existing urban scissors dance community. They defended themselves from discrimina- tion both outside and within their own migrant community by dedi- cating themselves to their academic education to a much greater extent than young performers normally do. The Chavez brothers developed unique insider/outsider perspectives on the scissors dance community in Lima that contributed to the integral artistic philosophy that sus- tains their cultural institution.

Performing together in Lima’s hotel shows for tourists in the late 1980s, the Chavez brothers quickly discovered their aptitude for the- atrical folklore performances for international audiences. They estab- lished Los Hermanos Chavez as an official cultural institution in 1993, before embarking on their first international performance at the Festival de Confolens in France. At this festival, the brothers observed a well- known Russian folk ballet company performing complex acrobatics in unison. Impressed, the brothers began to experiment with the idea of adapting this format to the scissors dance. By eschewing the dance’s normative competition models for stage presentations that imitated the one-on-one competitions of rural festivities, they created a new form of theatrical scissors dance called ‘El Ballet de la Danza de las Tijeras’. In a typical presentation of 15–20 minutes’ duration, a large ensemble of scissors dancers begin and conclude the performance with several minutes of synchronized choreography. In the middle, each dancer takes one or two solo turns, demonstrating individual acrobatic virtu- osity. This new model of artistic presentation has created a great deal of demand for the group to perform as ambassadors of Peruvian culture at well-known international folklore festivals, diplomatic events, artis- tic and academic conferences, and hotel shows for tourists, and it has inspired a host of imitators.

Los Hermanos Chavez claims that this new mode of scissors dance performance embodies the ideals of artistic excellence and collective

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discipline that distinguish the group from their peers. They appro- priated balletic technique not only to employ its methods as a frame- work for theatrical choreography, but also to develop from it a training method adapted from the classical positions of ballet that allows them to improve their ensemble work. Fredy Chavez, after studying theatrical direction and choreography at a university in Argentina, took over the role of troupe director and choreographer in 2000. He no longer dances with the group, but rather inhabits the role of the outside eye that guides the ensemble towards ever-greater levels of synchronized perfection. Moreover, the ideals of artistic respectability and professionalism shape the group’s view and narration of the ritual significance of the dance. Los Hermanos Chavez was the first group of Huancavelica performers to explicitly reject the notion that the scissors dancer engages in a pact with the devil. After investigating the origins of the dance by read- ing the work of anthropologists, the brothers developed a new narra- tive that describes the scissors dancer’s pact as being with nature, rather than with the devil. They attribute this discourse to their superior level of education, claiming that animism is more logical and scientific than the abstractions required by Christian belief. By embracing a more aca- demic position in relation to their art, the Chavez brothers maintain a close relationship to Andeanist ethnography, looking past the hybridity of popular Catholicism and diabolicism towards a narrative of indig- enous authenticity that has greater appeal for global audiences.

Other contemporary scissors dance groups and solo artists, even the more famous Ccarccaria, imitate both the choreographic artistry of Los Hermanos Chavez’s theatrical presentations and the elegance of their ethnographic narrative of the dance’s cultural significance. Yet these same qualities have contributed to the Chavez brothers’ outsider sta- tus with respect to the urban scissors dance community at large. The brothers’ greater level of education and class standing separates them from the majority of scissors dance performers, because their privileges enable them to pursue a less commercial form of artistic professional- ism. Meanwhile their lack of a family tradition of, and specialization in, theatrical presentation is seen by many other performers as evidence of a lack of authenticity, as well as a lack of belonging to a community that must embrace improvisation and publicity in a crowded global market- place just to get by.

Because of this outsider status, the group constantly defines itself against Ccarccaria, the de facto leader of the Huancavelica scissors dance community in Lima. While the Chavez brothers praise the celeb- rity dancer’s genuine skill and dedication to his craft, they portray

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Ccarccaria as a crafty opportunist willing to do or say anything for the sake of publicity. Ccarccaria suggests in turn that Los Hermanos Chavez performs beautiful theatrical presentations, and that the broth- ers speak elegantly about the ritual significance of the dance, but that they are not complete dancers able to perform in either the intense competitions of rural festivals or the rituals about which they speak. Both positions construct notions of authenticity in different ways in order to distinguish themselves. It is telling that Ccarccaria speaks from inside the community, where legitimacy is conferred through direct competition. Meanwhile, the Chavez brothers have adopted a more academic position that defines authenticity as a form of respectability in relation to purity of origins and lack of commercial motivation. This rivalry demonstrates how the urbanization and commodification of the scissors dance as a product of the global city pushes the performers to increasing heights of competitiveness in more permanent ways than the traditional festival competition. Moreover, it is the academic posi- tioning of the Chavez brothers that enables them to define their more refined artistic practice in opposition to Ccarccaria and Qori Sisicha’s reliance on attention from the national and global media and its ten- dency towards sensationalism.

La nueva generación3

Much of the rivalry between the individual entrepreneurialism of Qori Sisicha and Ccarccaria and the artistic collectivism of Los Hermanos Chavez centers on the transmission of the scissors dance to the next generation of performers; however, both groups tend to portray urban youth as a lost generation unaware of what it truly means to be a scis- sors dancer, of the ritual significance of the work, and of the performer’s role as a guardian of the customs and cultural memory of an Andean community. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to repeat earlier eth- nographers’ uncritical acceptance of this generational nostalgia. I have found the self-positioning of today’s young scissors dance performers more varied, complex, and interesting than simplistic narratives of a lost youth suggest. Like other urban Andean youths, young scissors dancers turn to a stunning variety of models in order to construct their identities, from comic book and sports heroes, to anthropological texts, to globalized images, and to discourses of indigenous authenticity.

Yet the complex circuits of contemporary urban scissors dance per- formance favor reinventing rather than discarding local ethnic identi- ties, and linking rather than separating rural, urban, and global spheres

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of influence. The center of these increasingly diversified circuits of per- formative labor has established itself firmly in urban Lima, intimately tied to both the rural hinterlands of highland Peru and global flows of cultural exchange. Performers born in Lima still make a name for them- selves mostly by performing in the intense competitions of rural fes- tivities; the physical exigencies and length of these competitions invite them to learn previously ignored ritual practices.

For example, a young dancer from Huancavelica named Cristal had no interest in the dance as a child until he saw a younger dancer per- forming modified break-dance moves for tips on an urban street corner. He learned the dance from his brothers, who all play the harp for well- known scissors dancers. Cristal knew very little Quechua and less about the cultural values of his ancestry until he began to earn contracts to perform in rural festivals, spending several weeks each year traveling to different villages in Huancavelica. Today he is fluent in Quechua and is proud of his role as a guardian of community tradition, even as he models his persona on the urbanized, entrepreneurial cosmopolitanism of his distant cousin, Ccarccaria.

Another young dancer, Killihuara, grew up in the town of Andamarca in rural Ayacucho. He distinguishes himself from young perform- ers born in Lima by claiming that he learned the ‘complete’ scissors dance repertoire rather than merely a modified urban choreography, yet Killihuara is no traditionalist. At 16, he migrated to Lima on his own specifically to pursue the diversified opportunities the capital city offers to scissors dance performers. He maintains a ritual relationship to the mountain deities of his village even as he dreams of becoming a respected international performer and successful cultural entrepreneur like Qori Sisicha, for whom he frequently works.

At the other end of the spectrum is Encanto de Puquio, who has lived in Lima his whole life and has had few opportunities to visit Puquio, the small Andean city from which his parents migrated in the 1950s. He has spent much of his brief career as a scissors dancer performing in touristic theatres and in the concerts of the fusion rock band, La Sarita. In everyday life, he often wears heavy metal t-shirts and black nail polish, which sometimes alienates him from other young scissors dance performers. Still, he has a deeply felt personal connection to Puquio and the mountain deities that surround it. He claims that the spirit of this place lives in him as he performs, no matter the context.

These brief comments about young scissors dance performers dem- onstrate the ways in which the intricate interweaving of cultural exchange among rural Andean villages, urban Lima, and global public

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spheres have come to define the dance as it has become a central image and cultural practice within the globalization of Peruvian culture. They also show that the staging of the scissors dance as commodified spectacle in urban and global public spheres is a far more complex phenomenon than simply the degradation of folkloric authenticity. These urban Andean youths represent emergent subjectivities and forms of cultural citizenship that draw upon models associated with global popular culture and neoliberal entrepreneurialism as well as global indigenous movements and both real and imagined connec- tions to rural Andean heritage. Furthermore, the specialist nature of the scissors dance as a form of embodied knowledge heightens the intensity through which the performers experience these emergent forms of hybrid identity as they emphatically re-enact an imagined pre-Hispanic heritage from a vocabulary and positionality firmly tied to the contemporary global city.

Notes

1. Earlier migrants were forced to incorporate themselves into the existing slums in the city center and downplay their provincial heritage in everyday interactions because of the constant threat of social discrimination. The only spaces that permitted the outward display of Andean identity were the coliseos, tent-theatres that hosted commercial Andean music and dance spectacles every Sunday.

2. All sources from this section are drawn from personal interviews with Fredy Chavez and Victor Chavez.

3. All sources from this section are drawn from personal interviews with ‘Cristal’, ‘Killihuara’, and ‘Encanto de Puquio’.

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