After 38 years, Apolinar Simbron still rises with the Voladores at Ceremonial
Special to the Times | Sharon Chischilly
Apolinar Simbron poses for a portrait Saturday night at Red Rock Park before the La Danza de los Voladores performance.
CHURCH ROCK, N.M.
The music came first. A cane flute no thicker than a finger and a small drum with a head painted red, white and green, both played by the same pair of hands high above the ground.
Then the men came off the pole.
Special to the Times | Sharon Chischilly
La Danza de los Voladores begin their performance Saturday night at Red Rock Park during the 104th annual Gallup Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial.
They went over backward, heads down, ankles cinched to yellow rope and arms flung wide with ribbons streaming from their fists. They wore white shirts, red trousers, embroidered capes fringed at the hem and black boots pointed at the sky. The rope paid out slowly from the crown of the pole as the wooden frame they had been sitting on turned above Red Rock Park.
Apolinar Simbron was 12 years old the first time he climbed a pole here. He is 65 now, and Aug. 8 he stood at the base of one, watching younger men go up in his place while the drum kept time overhead.
Simbron is a volador, a flying man, and his group performed La Danza de los Voladores during the 104th Gallup Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial, which ran July 31 through Aug. 9 at Red Rock Park.
To read the full article, please see the Aug. 13, 2026, edition of the Navajo Times.
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Highway 264,
I-40, WB @ Winslow