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Son de los diablos (1987) Photo/Foto: HIDVL
  • Title: Son de los diablos
  • Alternate Title: Devils' Dance
  • Holdings: video (HIDVL)
  • Duration: 00:06:18
  • Language: Spanish
  • Date: 1987
  • Location: Lima, Peru
  • Type-Format: performance
  • Cast: Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani.
  • Credits: Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani, director, producer, masks ; Movimiento Negro Francisco Congo, choreographers/dance instructors ; masks and costumes based on watercolor paintings by Pancho Fierro.

Son de los diablos (1987)

This piece is based on the traditional Afro-Peruvian street masquerade dance Son de los Diablos, which originated in the Corpus Christi celebrations in Lima during the Colonial Period. As the ruling elite in colonial Peru framed it, blacks represented evil forces in a religious drama. However, by the time of slavery's abolition in 1854, Afro-Peruvians had appropriated this dance as a symbol of cultural resistance and practiced it especially during carnival in the barrios where these were relocated. The Son was banned from the streets 1940s when President Manuel Prado prohibited carnival celebrations in Lima. In the 1980's the Movimiento Negro Francisco Congo, a collective dedicated to the recovery and revalorization of Afro-Peruvian traditions, approached Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani to recuperate the tradition of this street dance and to perform it on the streets once again. The group of Francisco Congo would teach the dance, and Yuyachkani would contribute their maskwork. Yuyachkani considered this dance a master dance for young actors because it includes codification of the body, maskwork, dancing, and an active and playful relationship with the audience.