Black Hills Powwow Dance Styles | Visit Rapid City

The reason for our powwows you know and our wacipi is what we say in our language is to bring people together. To make people feel good, carry on the traditions, to bring good feeling and life. To be a part of other experiences with other fellow human beings. Just a disclaimer when I talk about the history and origin you'll hear something different from every person you ask and you talk to because everyone has been taught something different. There are generalities when it comes to the origin an

d history of dances. The drum represents the heartbeat of our people. They say when the baby's in the mother's womb, the first sound, obviously, that it hears constantly is a mother's heartbeat. When the children come out when they hear that drum beat they just have this innate ability to want to dance or want to you know be drawn to that sound. The women's traditional dance, that's representative of our grandmothers, our mothers, our aunts, our life givers and the beautiful integrity. It's a gr

aceful, methodical, they connect to the ground at grandmother Earth and they hold/they find their spot that they want to dance and they stay there. There's also other tribes that the dancers move across the arena floor, traditional dancers, so there's a wide range of styles but I think more from what I've learned and in my experience has been with more of the northern women's traditional buckskin or cloth and it just depends on their style. But nonetheless the women's traditional style is really

graceful and you know it brings us to our traditional values and virtues. So the male style of traditional dance just similar to the image traditional represent uh you know what are Wica, Wicasa, Waciwicasa, is what we say for male dancers. They represent really what it means to be a provider, a protector, a warrior. The integrity and the honor of being a traditional dancer is you when you dance you your steps are a certain way maybe two steps on one foot two steps on the other and you copy wha

t you do on one foot you do on the left foot so two steps on one side two steps on the other as you're going around the floor and then uh you do that because that represents the balance of what it is to try to walk in balance and share in balance. And then eventually dancers once again started to break the mold and have different styles and it all represents uh the individuality and and the custom nature of each dancer and their inspiration and what they want to share with the people. So the gra

ss dance, style there's different origins but nonetheless the connection to the grass dancers is because long ago when there was 30 to 60 million bison, the buffalo grass was tall as tall as humans are even taller just waving in the in the prairie. And so a lot of times the uh there would be some representatives that would go in front of the camp and before we put up teepees and maybe set camp as we're following the bison and they would flatten the grass. And so that's why you see the style thou

gh usually the old original way was it with yarn on the regalia to emulate to show that, to look like the grass and then eventually cloth also was newer style but the methodical dance that the grass dancers dance it's like they're moving in the wind just like the the buffalo grass or the grass really on the prairies. The jingle dress dance is often referred to as the medicine dress but what I was taught is um this dance came through a dream when there was sickness amongst the Anishinaabe-Ojibwe

people. In a dream the women were wearing this dress with these sound of these ornaments or in a sense today they're cones. And the cones you know that are on this dress make the sound when they're dancing it's just a beautiful sound. Because they call it a medicine dress historically it was the practical purpose of the prayers and the ceremony of the jingle dress to help bring healing and help teach maybe this to be able to tell the stories of of healing and importance of coming together for th

ese ceremonies. The women's fancy shawl dance you know from what I was told and taught that originally amongst the plains tribes especially the majority of females would dance the traditional style that's with the buckskin and the fringe. They say that the fancy shawl was born when a when a grandmother really felt the different felt the uh inspiration to dance a different style so she grabbed that shawl wrapped around her arm and she wrapped it around herself and she asked the drum to sing her f

aster songs kind of forming a new style. And as she was dancing around she moved different than the other ladies it broke the mold of the traditional style but eventually now it's so intricate and the designs and the styles are more flashy and contemporary so it's evolved quite a bit and it's one of the most popular styles. The men's fancy feather some folks say that it was a dance that that derived from around the time that Buffalo Bill Cody, the performances that Buffalo Bill would put on. Tha

t was a style that was born that kind of more athletic flashy style because of the times in the late 1800s early 1900s. And so that's where I was told from some of the traditional knowledge keepers that that's where the dance were derived from. But I've also heard where traditionally they said that dance comes from the southern tribes. But it's just basically the bottom line is it's a you know provides a lot of entertainment and excitement, the most exciting dance probably style in the powwow ar

ena because of the energy that it brings and allows the dancers to share their style and tell their stories of their dance. it is important to learn about these traditional intricacies of what you're watching and you're seeing so you don't think everything's the same so that when you have that you'll have a better appreciation for what you're watching. As mankind, as human beings, we do better when we know better.