The Mexican Hat Dance is commonly called “Jarabe Tapatío” in Spanish.
- Jarabe = a traditional Mexican folk-dance style
- Tapatío = relating to Guadalajara, Jalisco
- So Jarabe Tapatío essentially means “the Guadalajara jarabe.”
It is the famous Mexican folk dance in which dancers often interact with a sombrero placed on the ground. The name “Mexican Hat Dance” is the English-language nickname.
There is a surprisingly rich connection among Jarabe Tapatío, Federico García Lorca’s concept of duende, and the dance shared by Elphaba and Galinda in Wicked. All three can be understood as moments when dance becomes more than choreography: it becomes a way of negotiating identity, vulnerability, community, and transformation.
1. Jarabe Tapatío: dance as a public negotiation of identity
The Jarabe Tapatío is often presented as exuberant, flirtatious, and celebratory. But underneath its familiar spectacle is a kind of dramatic negotiation between two people.
The dancers approach, withdraw, circle one another, mirror one another, and respond to one another. The sombrero becomes a shared object and eventually a kind of meeting place. The dance is not simply performed by two people; it is created between them.
That makes it useful to think about in relation to duende. The dance can be technically precise and still feel dead if there is no emotional electricity between the dancers. What matters is the presence they bring to the prescribed movements.
And that becomes especially interesting when we turn to Wicked.
2. Lorca's duende: when technique becomes something alive
Lorca's famous essay “Theory and Play of the Duende” describes duende as something radically different from technical mastery or conventional beauty.
For Lorca, duende comes from confrontation with something difficult: mortality, desire, fear, suffering, love, the limits of the self. It is the force that makes a performance feel as though something real is at stake.
His famous formulation is that the duende does not come from the Muse or the Angel but from “the blood.”
The important distinction is:
Technique gives you the dance. Duende gives you the reason to dance.
And duende is not necessarily pretty.
Indeed, Lorca is suspicious of performances that are merely polished. Duende involves risk, vulnerability, and a kind of struggle between the performer and the forces that threaten to overwhelm them.
That gives us an intriguing way of seeing the dance in Wicked.
3. Elphaba and Galinda: the dance begins as performance and becomes relationship
At the Ozdust Ballroom, Galinda initially invites Elphaba onto the dance floor almost as an act of social manipulation.
Elphaba is isolated.
Galinda is socially powerful.
The room is watching.
So when Elphaba begins to dance, she isn't merely dancing. She is exposing herself to judgment.
And this is where duende becomes a useful interpretive lens.
Elphaba's dancing isn't conventionally graceful. It is strange, angular, solitary, almost defiant. She isn't trying to satisfy the expectations of the room. She dances despite the room.
That is very close to Lorca's conception of duende: the performer reaches a point where something authentic emerges precisely because conventional performance has failed.
Then something remarkable happens.
Galinda joins her.
The scene changes from:
Elphaba performing alone
to
Elphaba and Galinda discovering each other through movement.
And that brings us back to the Jarabe Tapatío.
4. The unexpected connection: dance as invitation
In the Jarabe Tapatío, the dance is fundamentally relational. One dancer makes a gesture; the other responds.
There is teasing, pursuit, retreat, invitation, refusal, and eventual mutuality.
The Ozdust scene contains a radically stripped-down version of the same dramatic structure.
Galinda initially occupies the role of observer and social judge.
Elphaba refuses to conform.
Then Galinda makes the crucial choice:
She crosses the boundary between observer and participant.
She doesn't simply watch Elphaba anymore.
She dances with her.
That is the transformative moment.
5. The sombrero and the ballroom
There is also an intriguing symbolic parallel.
In Jarabe Tapatío, the sombrero creates a physical center around which the dancers organize themselves. It becomes an object through which two people communicate.
In Wicked, there is no equivalent physical object.
Instead, the dance floor itself becomes the shared space.
Elphaba enters it alone.
Galinda eventually enters it with her.
The floor therefore becomes a kind of symbolic threshold:
outside the dance:
social hierarchy, judgment, conformity
inside the dance:
risk, vulnerability, encounter
That is very much in the spirit of Lorca.
Duende often appears at precisely such thresholds—the point where a person risks stepping outside the safe, familiar, socially approved self.
6. The deepest connection: transformation through vulnerability
The three traditions can therefore be placed on a continuum:
| Jarabe Tapatío | Lorca's duende | Elphaba & Galinda | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starting point | Social ritual | Artistic performance | Social hierarchy |
| Problem | How do two people approach one another? | How does performance become authentic? | How can two radically different people encounter one another? |
| Mechanism | Dance | Risk and emotional truth | Shared movement |
| Turning point | Invitation/response | Vulnerability | Galinda joins Elphaba |
| Result | Mutual participation | Transformation of performance | Transformation of relationship |
The essential movement is:
separation → encounter → risk → recognition → relationship
7. And there is something particularly Lorcan about Elphaba
Lorca's duende is often associated with darkness, death, marginality, and the outsider.
Elphaba embodies all of these symbolically.
She is literally marked as different by her green skin. She is socially excluded. She doesn't possess the conventional beauty that defines Galinda's world. She cannot—or will not—perform femininity and popularity according to the rules of Oz.
And yet her awkward dance becomes one of the most authentic moments in the story.
This is important:
Elphaba becomes beautiful not by learning how to dance like Galinda, but by refusing to dance like everyone else.
That is almost a textbook duende insight.
The strange thing becomes beautiful because it is true.
8. Galinda's transformation is equally important
It would be easy to interpret the scene as being about Elphaba finding her confidence.
But Galinda changes too.
Her first impulse is to control the social situation. She understands the rules of the room. She knows what is fashionable, acceptable, attractive.
But eventually she recognizes something that cannot be controlled.
Elphaba's authenticity is more powerful than Galinda's social performance.
So Galinda crosses over.
That makes their dance a kind of conversion experience.
Galinda doesn't become Elphaba.
Elphaba doesn't become Galinda.
Instead, for a brief moment, they discover a space in which neither has to be the identity the world has assigned her.
That is where duende, folk dance, and musical theater unexpectedly meet.
9. A possible larger idea
You could think of all three as asking the same fundamental question:
What happens when we stop performing the person the world expects us to be and allow ourselves to encounter another person honestly?
The Jarabe Tapatío answers through ritual.
Lorca answers through artistic struggle and duende.
Wicked answers through friendship and dance.
And perhaps the most beautiful connection is this:
The Jarabe Tapatío is a dance of approach.
Duende is the force that makes approach dangerous and real.
Elphaba and Galinda's dance is what happens when two people risk that approach.
In that sense, the Ozdust Ballroom scene isn't really about learning to dance.
It is about learning how to see—and be seen by—another human being.
And that may be why the scene feels so unexpectedly moving: the dance becomes a language before the characters have words for what is happening between them.
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