Cielito

views updated

Cielito

Cielito, a traditional folk dance of the rural Río de la Plata region and Chile, also called cielo. The slow, stately dance, dating from colonial days, is performed by couples who dance around one another. Partners do not touch each other. Over time, the rural lower classes enlivened the dance with variations, such as snapping their fingers. Cielito shared some similarities with the nineteenth-century pericón, which came to be considered the most patriotic and typical dance of Argentina.

See alsoMusic: Popular Music and Dancexml .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Carlos Vega, Las danzas populares argentinas (1952).

Félix Coluccio, Diccionario folklórico argentino, vol. 1 (1964), p. 77.

Additional Bibliography

Barrera, Rosita. Abrazo de identidad: Danzas paralelas de Argentina y Chile. Santiago de Chile: [s.n.], 1996.

Veniard, Juan María. "El minué. Supervivencia de una danza aristocrática en el salón romántico rioplatense." Latin American Music Review/Revista de Música Latinoamericana 13 (Autumn 1992): 195-212.

                                   Richard W. Slatta