This is a brief clip of a traditional dance known as the Dance of the Scissors being performed in a tiny town called Andamarca. I've been travelling quite a lot recently (four of the past seven nights spent on overnight buses!) in the Apurimac and Ayacucho regions. Apurimac and Ayacucho don't see a lot of travellers, and are more traditional than most parts of Peru.
On Tuesday, I went with these dancers and an enormous troupe of musicians, photographers, and hangers-on to see a 'baptism' ceremony. After a three-hour hike to a waterfall, the dancers performed at the edge of a lake, and then entered a cave for their baptism.
The ceremony was beautiful and bizarre, with dancers in Converse speaking Quechua and men carrying enormous harps over boulders. I ate trout soup by a stream while talking about martial arts movies. It was a wonderful day.
These types of customs and traditions definitely have a role to play when it comes to adaptation. I went to Andamarca to learn about their terraces, which date back to Inca times. Terraces retain water well and protect crops from extremes of heat and cold. An archeologist named Ann Kendall has worked with local communities to rebuild these terraces as an adaptation measure. Traditional instititions -- like the local leader who oversees irrigation, or the yearly festival that accompanies communal labor to rehabilitate terraces -- are a key part of agriculture in this region, and will be a key part of adaptation.
