¡Viva Mexico!

So it was Friday afternoon, I was feeling mostly broke (as usual), and I was (as usual) looking for something interesting to see. Ah. I know. I’ll go to Mexico.

Well, not south of the border Mexico, but Museum Mexico, at the ever-interesting Houston Museum of Natural Science. See, every so often they do a family-friendly party with a “someplace interesting” theme, and this week it’s Mexico.

I went online and paid for my fare (MUCH less than AeroMexico — and no body searches!!) and caught a bus.

C’mon, let’s go. D’you wanna live forever?

{insert hour-long bus-and-train trip here…}

They were waiting for me.

I’ve shot these folks several times for the Chronicle, and I hated to disappoint them by admitting “No, tonight I’m just here for the fun of it…” but they were good sports about it, and I get to use them here anyway.

And inside the door were a couple of trays of various Mexican sweets – I have a terrible weakness for marranitos, so I snuck over to the side and grabbed a couple of shots and snagged a piggy before they were all gone…. When I’m working for the paper I don’t get to do that sort of thing, but tonight I paid my own way in, so I can go for the good stuff.

Yup. As good a pig as I’ve ever had… for the next 20 minutes I wander the floor nibbling. Gotta make it last.

For those of you who’ve never had the chance, marranitos (sometimes cochinos or puerquitos) are traditional “Ginger Pigs” – heavy baked yummy stuff, somewhere between cookies and dense cakes. Interestingly enough, they don’t usually have ginger in them. The taste is molasses, with sometimes a hint of cinnamon. Slightly sweet but not too much so (Mexican pastries in general tend to have more flavor and less refined sugar than the North American varieties…)

As I think I said, (yup, right up there) these parties aim to be family friendly, so most of the activities are aimed at the little ones… Arts and crafts tend to involve paper, scissors, glue, and crayons, with sometimes a small sprinkling of “ooh, gross!” just for flavor…

Nachos a la cricket, for example.

Also there were mask making, cutouts of traditional figurines, paper flower creation, and so forth.

(Plus the usual face painting and a clown with balloons)

And, of course, the mariachis, who followed us in and took station beside the HMNS Foucault Pendulum.

The acoustics in that spot are interesting, since the ceiling behind them is 3 stories above and in front of them is about 10 feet… but they sounded great anyway.

And, as I always do, I spent a couple of minutes watching the pendulum. And tonight, for the first time ever, I saw the pendulum knock one of the points down. So that was cool. Not meaningful in any great sense, perhaps, but still. Cool. Physics still works. (I really need to sit down and read the theory behind this thing – one of these days, probably.)

And while I was standing there a bit buzzed over this, from behind me the DJ switched from whatever he was playing (pleasant background) to folklórico, and announced the main attraction (for me, anyway): a performance by Jose Sada’s Mixteco Ballet Folklórico.

Dammit, I’d gotten so wrapped up in watching the pendulum, listening to the mariachis, and watching kids learn things distantly related to Mexican culture and history, that I was way out of place for the main event. By the time I got to the main hall, there were people four to six deep around the dance space and NO view.

When in doubt, go for altitude.

Stairs are across the hall, but the elevator’s right over THERE. Second floor balcony is wide open.

Second best spot in the house. (We’ll get to the best spot in a moment.)

And the balcony goes all the way around, so there are variations to shoot…

It’s a fairly short performance, because this is high-energy stuff they’re doing here and there’s no backstage for costume changes….

so they take a break, the crowd disperses a little, and since I know what’s coming I duck down into my preferred spot, front row side, low.

And this IS the best spot in the house.

And with a bit of luck… yup. Second set is the Guadalajara dresses, which are absolutely my favorite type of folklórico to shoot. The dresses swirl and the dancers whirl and it all becomes this kaleidoscopic effect of color and stripes and movement….

I’ve been watching these kids since they started, and they just keep getting better.

They wind up that dance and the music changes, and I go hunting for another place.

See, I have this tendency sometimes to find the perfect spot and just camp there. I’ll shoot and shoot and then I wind up with two dozen good clean shots of the same thing from the same angle. Although it guarantees you’ll get SOMETHING, it’s actually a very bad habit to get into if you’re working alone. You wind up without enough variation between shots to show the various aspects of the dance, and it gets boring after two or three frames.

When the group gets ready for the next number I’m in “front” of them… and behind them is the brightly lit wall. Oops.

But the Gods are with me, this is Jarabe Tapatío, the famous “Mexican Hat Dance.” It’s a personal favorite, a lot of fun to watch, and it has lots of wonderful posing moments… It’s made for silhouettes.

And then the dancers come closer to the crowd, and the young lady in green flashes a beautiful smile…

I’ve been doing this long enough to know perfect moments when I catch them. It just doesn’t GET any better than that.

I love this museum. The party was a blast, thanks for coming along.