The dancers, called matachines or danzantes, form two facing files, wear a fringed headdress that hangs a curtain of ribbon over the face, and carry a three pronged wand called a palma in one hand and a gourd rattle in the other. They move through a fixed series of numbered figures to a violin and guitar, or in some villages to a drum, and the music is learned by ear from the previous generation of players.
Three named figures move between the files. The Monarca leads, wears the largest headdress and is often read as Moctezuma. La Malinche is a small girl in a white communion dress, and her identification is itself contested: the name is that of the Nahua woman who interpreted for Cortes, but in the dance she is a figure of innocence and conversion, and communities differ on which reading they hold. The Toro is a masked bull who disrupts the figures and is subdued or killed at the end. One or two Abuelos, masked grandfather figures with whips, keep the crowd back, chase children, and comment loudly on whatever is happening, which makes them both crowd control and licensed disorder.
The dance is performed on feast days, above all the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe on 12 December, at Christmas, and at each village's patronal feast. In the Pueblo communities it sits alongside the community's own ceremonies rather than replacing them, and that coexistence is the subject of the best study of the dance.