A Text in Movement in the Totonac Flyers’ Dance: A Performance‐Embodied Theory

My aim in this article is to explore how the connection between mind, body, society, and environment functions in the Flyers’ Dance–a well‐known ritual in Mexico–to create meaning and enable the apprehension of the world. It is the interaction among brain, mind, body, and environment, as well as the intersubjective relations among them, that gives rise to meaning and continuously creates and recreates social interaction. The purpose of the theory I am developing–provisionally titled Performance‐Embodied Theory –is to identify the principles and patterns that structure cultural practices and shape the ways in which the Totonac people apprehend their environment through the performance of this dance. How can we, as anthropologists, interpret the transformation of unconscious knowledge into conscious understanding within the context of public rituals such as the Flyers’ Dance? How can we understand the formation of imaginative schemes and their associated collective imagery? The Danza de los Voladores (Flyers’ Dance) is a famous ritual in Mexico that has been described and analyzed from various perspectives by scholars such as Galinier (1998), Nájera (2008), and Stresser‐Péan (2016). However, only a few researchers mention the figure of Chakganá, the Fisher (Gaona, 1990; Jáuregui, 2013), and those who do tend to interpret its elements in isolation rather than as part of a complex ritual‐dance whole (Villani, 2018, 2021, 2024). In contrast, this theory–aligned with Basarab Nicolescu’s (1998) view of human beings as body-mind agents–seeks to interpret the dance holistically, integrating its various elements into a unified understanding.