Apache Crown Dancers

This band, Troubadour was the opening act and they sang old fashioned country music.

The red arm bands with the feathers represent their pride in their apache blood.

This dancer in front wears a headdress that is symbolic for the direction West.

The dancer to the far right in the photo wears a headdress that is symbolic for the direction North.

This dancer's headdress is based off of the antlers of a deer, the movements he makes are therefore based on the movements of a deer as well.  If I remember right his headdress also represents the direction of South.  The singer and drummer is half Navajo and half Apache and actually grew up pretty close to Pinon in Rough Rock.  He's been involved with the group since he was six.  All of the dancers in the group are related to him on the Apache side.

The dancer with the white body paint is supposed to symbolize the clown of the group.  Although the drummer was the funny one as far as the crowd was concerned.  The drummer teased this poor dancer, the youngest of the group throughout the entire performance.

The biggest dancer had the biggest headdress, which symbolized the rising sun and the direction of East.

It was a great night.  Apache Crown Dancing is a style of dance.  The dancers begin in a line then circle up, move into another line and then into another circle.  Most of the dances mainly look the same but have enough variation that you don't get bored.  If you have the chance to see this style of dance do it, it's worth it.
The very last number that they did for us was a sacred blessing.  They asked us to turn off all electronic devices and put cameras away.  So I have nothing from that dance.
I am looking forward to this Thursday, it's going to be the Drums of Summer!  Basically the football field is going to become a giant Pow Wow.  The only thing I don't like about it is that it is going to last all night, which means that I am probably not going to sleep.  Why are we doing this on a school night?