Aztecs dance again

Aztecs new to American Indian Festival in ChesapeakeNew this year will be an appearance from the Nahui Ollin (means "four elements" ) Aztec Dancers, a troupe based in Arizona and Pennsylvania. Composed of about 50 members of the Salinas family from Mexico City, the company is famous for its re-creations of pre-Hispanic (or pre-Colombian) Indian dances that date back more than 600 years to when Aztecs ruled Mexico with mighty stone cities and a complex culture that included mathematics, engineering and astronomy.

"As a child living in Mexico City, we would perform these dances every weekend to teach our culture and show where we came from," Salinas said from the troupe's Arizona headquarters. "These dances are passed from generation to generation to generation. Now we share our culture and our advances with Indians up north. We now go to different pow-wows throughout the country to explain our dances, our regalia, our culture."