Dance anthropologist Zoila Mendoza laughs when asked if she is a dancer. "No," she says, decisively. Then immediately she adds that her friends would say, "Zoila, you're a great dancer." And in fact, Mendoza, a UC Davis assistant professor, learned many folkloric and popular steps in her native country of Peru. "I love to dance. I know quite a few dance styles. I loved music and dance growing up." Today, that passion infuses her work as an anthropological dance scholar. As she looks at a handful of color slides of an annual Bolivian carnival, her eyes sparkle and her characteristically rapid speech accelerates as she explains the meaning of the dancers' costumes and their significance in the context of Latin American society. Mendoza's unabashed excitement over photographs of the dance rituals makes it clear she has found her niche. Yet, the study of the highly social South American and African dance rituals is itself a rather lonesome place to be. Mendoza is in a fledgling discipline that falls somewhere between the study of music and dance performance and the study of anthropology. She entered the field of dance anthropology after leaving Peru in the mid-1980s to study at the University of Chicago. She returned to her roots when she took up the study of dance rituals. Her path to dance ritual and performance scholarship was not as direct as it might appear, though. Hooked on ethnomusicology The year before she was leaving Chicago to carry out her dissertation research in Peru, the university hired its first ethnomusicologist--a scholar who studies music in its sociocultural context. Mendoza took a class from the professor, who then became one of her advisers and encouraged her to emphasize aspects of performance in the study of two-year cycles of dance in Peru. This adviser urged her to present papers at ethnomusicology conferences. "Little by little, I became an ethnomusicologist by practice, not so much by training," she says. Mendoza embarked on a career that would straddle two disciplines--anthropology and music. The endeavor necessitates careful balancing and is not entirely comfortable, she says. "It is kind of a lonely stage. Music departments largely emphasize the specialized and highly trained musicianship of the Western world. But I'm coming from another world. "It is difficult to have a community of colleagues in music, even among some ethnomusicologists. The language, our interests, are so different. Sometimes it is limiting in terms of professional growth, so I have to go out of my way to have my own community." Trying to find a community in anthropology circles presents almost as many hurdles. Though the anthropological study of dance performance is now beginning to grow, she is among a minority of scholars. She describes how dance might be studied by anthropologists: as a ritual; by dance anthropologists, as dance movement; by ethnomusicologists, as music. "In my work, I try to integrate all of those, I can't separate them." Finding a community But at meetings of the American Anthropological Association, during three to four days of meetings, just one or two panels might focus on dance or music, Mendoza says. As part of her search for a community on campus, earlier this year Mendoza helped select visiting scholars in residence through the campus's Indigenous Research Center of the Americas, a program sponsored by the Native American studies department. She was able to help bring to campus an artist from Cuzco, Peru. Mendoza's teaching also must narrow the chasm between anthropology and music. She teaches ethnomusicology courses through the music department but belongs to a graduate group in anthropology and this year will teach "Performance in the Americas" through the music and Native American studies departments. Mendoza says she must get students to rethink their preconceptions. "I have to break the ground for people's thinking in a different way." Ethnomusicology "is a very human way to learn. The students can relate to it. One student said, `My parents are from Portugal, and I was never interested, but now I can talk with my parents.'" Returning each summer to Peru to visit her family and conduct research in Cuzco, Mendoza studies dance as a dancer, the only perspective she knows. "I lived through it, and that's how I want to study it, from the perspective of how most people experience it," Mendoza said. "Sometimes I have to explain to other academics that maybe theory is not all that important!" Theorizing from what's on the ground The theorizing Mendoza does do about dance rituals "has to come from what is on the ground," what the dancers are doing, what is relevant to the people there, not simply a theory researchers impose upon actual events. In her research, she studies festivals, carnivals and dance troupes in the Andes, looking at how race, ethnicity and politics play out in the dance. "The dance is the window through which I explore all the issues -- politics, gender conflicts. Dance is a whole world, looking at conflicts that emerge based on gender, nationalism, regionalism and transnationalism as they define a local identity." "I look at why is it so important for the people to have the dance," Mendoza says. At times, Mendoza has found herself drawn into the politics of the dance rituals. For example, while doing research in Peru a few years ago, she found herself an instant expert called into a controversy over new dances that included women and broke away from the tradition of exclusively male dancers. "I was the expert. I spoke on the radio, was quoted in the newspaper, gave public talks and was called to mediate all these public discussions." Mendoza herself supported the new dances. "I identified with the new generation. I had to explain my reasons why I was defending the new traditions. There was no role for women in the old forms; women were being marginalized. The new dances incorporated the way men and women move now." Ultimately, no resolution occurred despite Mendoza's mediation, with younger dancers still attempting to thwart tradition by including women in the dances, even at risk of being jailed. "Every year that I go back, there is a new dance group in town, and there are still those who think the dances aren't proper. But the people keep doing it!" The drama of the dance rituals -- which reflect societal concerns such as about racism or politics in Peru -- will play out in Mendoza's forthcoming book, which focuses on Cuzco dance societies. Despite the relative solitude of her field, Mendoza thrives on her research and teaching. "I love the subject, to open people's minds to other cultures and create a sensitivity."