Dance Styles

Women's Fancy/Shawl:

The young women who dance this style wear elaborately beaded capes, moccasins and leggings that are usually complemented by beautifully embroidered or decorated long-fringed shawls. The colorful regalia match the spirited movements of this exuberant dance.

Men's Traditional:

This dance comes from a long history of imitation of the animal spirit world. The eagle feather bustles, the grouse feathers, the deer and elk and the porcupine headdress are all a portion of this wonderful dance.

This is a time for the traditions of our grandmothers and grandfathers to be carried out. Some regalia pieces have been passed down many generations reflecting items worn by early warriors.

Men's Fancy Dance:

Became popular in the early 1960's in Oklahoma. The Kiowa/Comanche people began to design special outfits for the whirling and jumping aspect of young men in their efforts to identify a fancy dance or fast war dance. It is a very unique, active and energetic dance of young men. In this dance in particular, a friendly competition may develop between the singers and the dancers because stopping with the end beat

can mean winning or losing points. The singers perform "trick songs" with unexpected last beats.

Women's Jingle:

The Jingle Dance has its own legend. They say that an old man on his deathbed dreamt of his daughter clothed in a dress with cones sewn around the cloth. Spirits told him how to make those cones. Then he dreamt that his daughter and three of her friends were dancing in those dresses. He recovered and recalled the sight and sound of the metal cones, so he taught his daughter how to make the special dresses. And so, the lyrical Jingle Dance was born.