Ballet Folklórico as a codified stage tradition was consolidated in the 20th century, notably by choreographer Amalia Hernández, to gather Mexico's enormously varied regional, Indigenous, and mestizo dance traditions into one shared, portable national art form — a way to represent post-revolutionary Mexican identity both at home and abroad.

The Totonac ceremony encodes a cosmology: the pole represents the connection between earth and sky, and the five participants' 13 circuits per flyer (52 total) mirror the 52-year cycle of the Mesoamerican calendar round. The "flight" itself was — and for many practitioners remains — a fertility rite and prayer for rain and abundance, not a performance.

Performed by the Yaqui (Yoeme) and Mayo peoples of Sonora, the deer dancer ritually becomes the deer itself — moving through its final hunt, its fear, and its death, accompanied by singers and rasp-players narrating in the Yaqui language. It is not staged for an audience but a ceremony that asks forgiveness of the deer's spirit for the hunt that sustains human life, reflecting a worldview in which humans, animals, and the natural world are bound in reciprocal, sacred obligation.