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HOME> Peru> Senor de Choquekillka

22 June 2011

Senor de Choquekillka

The Senor de Choquekillka festival is celebrated every June in the Cusco province of Peru, and we were lucky enough to drop into Ollantaytambo for a couple of days in the middle of it. There seem to be about six different traditional masked dances, but each troupe tries their damnest to include new and funny hijinks every year to outdo each other. These aren’t polished and perfected dances like the Legong on Bali. Well, I have a strong suspicion that most of the performers have had a few beers beforehand so they couldn’t be really. But they’re colourful, fun and thoroughly entertaining. And no doubt laced with meaning and narrative that I can’t even begin to follow.

The festival of Senor de Choquekilla in the small town of Ollantaytambo is a riot of colourful bands and dances

$One common element, all the dancers are masked - although I\'m going to need wikipedia to find out what they all mean$

The costumes are an absolute riot of colour

And the ladies wear masks as well as the men

And sometimes the men wear masks that are ladies... if that makes sense?

But the most common form of mask is the balaclava, and the figures wearing them often seem to be quite rebellious

$Then again, there\'s also some clear religious significance to a lot of them$

Splendid headgear - I want one

$This figure I do know a tad more about - he\'s a bear man called Ukuku$

This starts quite formulaic, but soon turns into anarchic tussling

I also get the feeling that every year each troupe and each dancer tries to do something a bit extra and a bit different

And for the extra squeee factor, every dance troupe brings a few minature versions along

$Various hijinks are another way to make a dance stand out - the whipping of each other\'s feet is a common theme$

Another form of hijinks seems to be making a huge pile-up of dancers for a finale

$And getting sprayed with beer is also common - this wart-nosed fellow is \'Buffoon\'$

$My favourite dance - the dance of the drunken men, where the audience are the ones who get beer\'d$

$It\'s a dance, honestly, not a fight$

$I get the feeling I\'m being watched$

...from dawn...

There was also a huge crowd in the grand Plaza des Armas of Cusco for the various processions which go right through June

The one we saw most of was from all the local schools, and was of course very cute

The kids were performing, or trying to, just the same dances we saw in Ollantaytambo

A few days later it was the departments of the local universities parading around the square

They may have had firecrackers, but I have to say that crowd barriers and security personnel make for much less fun than Ollantaytambo, where the festival went on...

...until dark and right through the night

And of course, in the morning the band serenaded the town from the Inca ruins above

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Tags: culture, dance, festival, fun

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