Today has involved laundry, relaxation, lunch of soup and salad for Kathie and me and soup and Rueben sandwich for Dave at a local eatery, then a visit to the Cortez Cultural Center. This is in a rustic 1906 building which hosts western music several times per week and Native American Dancing on alternate evenings. We've also had intermittent rain.
We went to dinner at a local southwest/Mexican restaurant. Since none of us likes really spicey Mexican food, La Casitas hit the spot, although the chips and salsa had a hot tinge.
This evening we went back to the Cultural Center for a performance of Ute Indian cultural dancing. The "emcee" was a rather rotund man whose last name was Lopez. He introduced his two daughters, both of whom have won the Miss Colorado Indian contest. They were dressed in cultural attire which for one, included the skirt full of brass-like bells which jingled when she danced. The emcee and his sons-in-law played the drum and sang. To our ears, none of the songs sounded different, but then they probably have that impression of some white and black "cultural" music, too. There was a darling daughter of one of the daughters (the granddaughter of the emcee) who was about 2-3 years old who wanted to imitate her mother and aunt when they danced, following them around the circular performance center
One of the most interesting things the emcee said was regarding the designs and insignia used by different tribes. He commented it was important for the Ute men to wear the scalps of enemy. But he promised there would be none of that in tonight's performance. He said the spear that was used to kill Custer was in the Smithsonian and incorrectly identified as belonging to another tribe, until a Ute properly identified it as belonging to the Ute tribe!
As the performance went on we watched the waning moon and build-up of very stormy clouds, hoping we wouldn't get wet before the performance ended. The emcee commented that most performances were able to be completed outside, as was tonight's.
I must apologize for not having any photos with today's blog. When we got to a camp with wifi, I downloaded my pix to the computer, but didn't tell the computer to import them. Then I erased them from my camera before I checked that they'd downloaded. Blame it on fatigue.
Again we were impressed with similarity to Basotho cultural dancing in which hip movement and the tinkling of the skirt are important. The Basotho use bottle caps in which they have punched a hole , and strung together and attached to a skirt. They make a sound similar to the Indian bells skirt which the performer/dancer said was very heavy!
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