Some care is taken to avoid accidents, but Mexico City is the only area where gun powder and firecrackers are prohibited. As fiesta aficionados well know, the crowning fireworks are torched on the last day of the fiesta and often on the weekends as well. Castillos are towers of fireworks intricately fashioned so that they turn, shoot into the air and create designs one portion at a time. He often precedes the performance of ritual dances. These, the danzas are a uniquely Mexcican aspect of some fiestas and they are listed in the calendar as danzas, not bailes, which are social dances.
Ritual dances are distinct from folkloric dances which are called balet folklorico.
It is always a good idea to inquire in the neighboring pueblo or to make a visit to the small pueblo where the danzantes have performed before in order to verify that it will indeed occur again. Like all ancient customs in the Republic, these are variable. Perhaps the most frequently filmed spectacle is the Dance of the Voladores, well known in Papantla, Vera Cruz and performed at the fiesta of Corpus Cristi. Not only in Vera Cruz, but north through Tlaxcala, Hidalgo and on to San Luis Potosi, the flyers perform a death defying rite, diving from a pole, their feet held by ropes. Shortly after the Conquest the dance was performed by men dressed as bright birds, macaws and eagles, so we learn from the writings of an Indian scribe writing in Spanish.