FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2011 • 6:00p.m. -8:45 p.m.
de Young Museum • 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive in Golden Gate Park
Pre-opening Night of Olmec: Colossal Masterworks of Ancient Mexico
Members only night for Olmec exhibition.
Programs are free and open to the public.
Welcome and acknowledgement of the ancestral spirits of the Olmec people by indigenous community leaders Ann Marie Sayers (Ohlone), Don Pascual Yaxon Saloj (Maya Kaqchikel culture bearer), and Conception J. Saucedo, founder of and director for many years of Instituto Familiar de al Raza, San Francisco. Live music by Orquesta La Moderna Tradición celebrating danzón. Danzón, was brought by Cuban refugees to Veracruz in the 1870′s. It was originally performed only by the lower classes but it eventually gainedacceptance within all levels of society. The weekly danzón concerts and dances in the Zocalo of the city of Veracruz are internationally known. In fact, it has survived as a dance longer there than in Cuba.
6:00 – 8:30 p.m.
Join us for Hands on Art-making for the entire family
In Koret Auditorium-7:00 p.m.
FILM: Pelea de Tigres/Tigers Fight, 1987, 60 min., Dir. Alfredo Portilla and Alberto Becerril
In the southern Mexican state of Guerrero, the Nahua adult male dress with jaguar costumes and seriously beat each other in order to have rain for their fields. The bigger and stronger the collective fight is, the more it will rain. Along with traditional music and dances this collective catharsis happens at the catholic day of the holy cross. Some archaeologists believethat combat rituals like the Tigre fights date back roughly 3,000 years to the earliest days of the Olmec civilization and were also practiced by the Maya, Zapotecs, and Aztecs.