Pueblo Dance, From the Inside:

“I admire our ancestors who gave us so many beautiful things where we can [dance] whatever we feel FROM THE HEART.”
—Andrew Garcia (Ohkay Owingeh, formerly San Juan Pueblo), in “Dancing from the Heart”

“Shadeh is the Tewa word for dance. Translated literally, shadeh means ‘to be in the act of getting up, of waking up.’ By dancing, one awakens, arises in a heightened sense of awareness to the dance and participation in its meaning. To dance is to move with the song and sound of the drum and, hence, to participate in an ageless cosmic movement. The dance honors and recognizes the interactive role of human beings with the natural world.”
—Rina Swentzell (Santa Clara Pueblo) and Dave Warren (Santa Clara Pueblo), “Shadeh,” in “Native American Dance: Ceremonies and Social Traditions,” Charlotte Heth, ed. Washington DC: National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, with Starwood Publishing, 1992, p.93.

“... For example, a harvest dance gives life to forces that have always provided sustenance to the people; it recalls in its movements many memories of migration and sustains cycles of natural power and order. It is a collectively expressed prayer, joining dancers and audience at the center of the process.”
—Dave Warren (Santa Clara Pueblo), “Place in the Universe,” in “Powerful Images: Portrayals of Native America,”
[ www.ed-resources.net/guide/lessonplans/place/more.htm ]

Andrew and Butterfly Garcia at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center

Tewa Dancers from the North in Women's Pueblo Dance: Dorea,

Rey Ann, Valerie, Kayla and Jahneaha

Curt Garcia in the Eagle Dance

Curt Garcia in the Deer Dance

Tewa Dancers from the North in Women's Pueblo Dance

Andrew and Butterfly accompany a Buffalo Dancer

Pueblo Dance, From the Outside:

“Never shall I forget the utter absorption of the [Pueblo] dance, so quiet, so steadily, timelessly rhythmic, and silent, with the ceaseless downtread, always to the earth’s centre, the very reverse of the upflow of Dionysiac or Christian ecstasy. Never shall I forget the deep singing of the men at the drum, swelling, sinking, the deepest sound I have heard in all my life, deeper than thunder...”
—D.H. Lawrence, “New Mexico,” reprinted in Tony Hillerman, ed., “The Spell of New Mexico,” Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1976 (reprint ed. 1984)

“If you stay on [at the dance], and if you keep quiet, the rhythms of drum, song, and dance, the endlessly changing formations of the lines of dancers, the very heat and dust, unite and take hold. You will realize slowly that what looked simple is complex, disciplined, sophisticated. You will forget yourself. The chances are then that you will go away with that same odd, empty, satisfied feeling which comes after absorbing any great work of art.”
—Oliver La Farge, “New Mexico,” 1952, reprinted in Tony Hillerman, ed., “The Spell of New Mexico,” 1976.

Carl Jung speaks of “that enviable serenity of the Pueblo Indians. Such a man is in the fullest sense of the word in his proper place.”
—“The Pueblo Indians,” in “Memories, Dreams, Reflections,” reprinted in Tony Hillerman, ed., “The Spell of New Mexico,” 1976.

"It was August fourth, and on the way down I mentioned that that was the big corn dance at Santo Domingo [Pueblo]. [The Stravinskys and Robert Craft] hadn't even been to bed, and we drove down to see the last hour of the dance ... and [Igor Stravinsky] was so moved. At the end, a film of dust came across, just like somebody had drawn a fine curtain when [the dance groups from] the two kivas came together. And I turned around, and Stravinsky's tears were rolling down, just covered with dust, he was so touched."
—Miranda Speranza Masocco Levy, in John Pen La Farge, “Turn Left at the Sleeping Dog: Scripting the Santa Fe Legend, 1920-1955,” Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001, p.332.