This is an example of what mariachi dance looks like. The men usually have their hands clasped to their back at all times and it’s very much leg/step oriented, whereas the women move their arms around constantly.

On the other hand, this is an example of flamenco, it has very brusque, quick movements, a fast pace change of poses that are all very different each time. The clap nate does is almost a typical statement in every flamenco dance I’ve seen

All in all, this was personally a fun programme for me to watch and it has some fun fusion elements to it. But the choreo is deffo more on the flamenco Spanish side than anything else.

There’s still some empty parts in the programme that I hope some more mariachi elements will be introduced (I.e the nonexistent transitions into the combo, that’d be fun to add a small part of hands clasped behind back twizzles?)

Anyways I just thought this was really interesting and I hope some other people found it that way too, I’m excited overall to see if new pieces will be added here and there . Don’t be afraid to correct me either :)

additional to this after some more thought

this went from what I thought were comments of a very first draft of a programme in my mind, to now critically thinking what could now be amended to respect the culture involved.

In my opinion after this analysis, it’d be better to just slap some Flamenco music as the choreography that centres around that genre is already there for the whole programme and it’d help to evade being disrespectful to Mexican culture.

This lack of dance research falls on both the choreographer and skater (although by far on the former).

I did some more research into “Canción del Mariachi” to try somewhat understand why SLB took this decision (since her ig is deactivated im just left with speculation for now)

Canción del Mariachi is written by Paco Rentería, he is a flamenco guitar player who had also lived and worked in Guadalajara (). Furthermore, the singers in the song involve Antonio Banderas (Spaniard) and Los Lobos (Mexican-American).

Its quite possible due to both the author of the song and the singers being a “mix” of both cultures, that this then transcended to undertones in the music. Most mariachi songs are played in major key but this one is played in minor key (flamenco music is usually played in minor)

This isn’t to take away any (rightful) criticism, its just some more insight as to perhaps why this happened.
There are also multiple dance competition videos in YouTube involving this song with SOLELY mariachi or flamenco choreography (not a mix, just decided on one)

Again this is all just speculation as to what might’ve happened and i thought the fusion of the artists was interesting and just wanted to share that.
I do hope the criticism going around is seen and taken into consideration and hopefully rectified for the next competition.