• Folk Festival 2007: Check out video, slideshows, stories from last year

While strolling around the Richmond Folk Festival next month, don't forget to look up.

The Tezcatlipoca Voladores, a group of traditional Mexican flyers, have been added to the lineup of musicians and artists.

The group will perform its ancient Mayan ritual, the Sundance, in which the flyers jump from the top of a 90-foot pole and swing slowly to the ground in circles with ropes tied to their ankles.

The performance will take place three or four times during the free festival, which runs Oct. 10-12 along the downtown riverfront.

"Of all the performances we've seen, and will continue to see at future Richmond Folk Festivals, this will undoubtedly rank as one of the most spectacular," said Lisa Sims, director of events for festival organizer Venture Richmond. "We tried to secure this group for the first year of the National [Folk Festival], but just couldn't do it. After that, we came back to them each year, wanting them to be here. For the first Richmond Folk Festival, we all felt that we really needed to make this happen."

To accommodate the flyers, festival organizers purchased the 90-foot pole from Dominion Virginia Power for about $2,700. About a week before the festival, the pole, which represents the connection of the earth to the heavens, will be secured in the ground, and the tribe will come to Richmond to bless it.

The Tezcatlipoca Voladores hail from Tajín, Veracruz, Mexico, where the Sundance tradition is believed to have originated.

According to Josh Kohn of the National Council for the Traditional Arts, the earliest description of the dance comes from Christopher Columbus, who, on his fourth journey to North America in 1502, wrote about an "amazing" dance he saw at an Indian village in what is now southern Mexico.

The Voladores join a diverse lineup of more than 30 performing groups that include Nukariik (Inuit throat singers from Quebec); San Jose Taiko (Japanese drum and dance); Dale Watson (honky-tonk country); and Nadeem Dlaikan & Friends (traditional Arabic music).

The Richmond Folk Festival is modeled on the National Folk Festival, which held court in Richmond the past three years and attracted an average of 100,000 people over its three days. That made it the biggest event in the area next to twice-yearly NASCAR races.

Last year, organizers say the festival broke the National Council for the Traditional Arts' record for the largest crowd by hosting 175,000 people over three days.

This inaugural Richmond Folk Festival is being crafted in the exact likeness of the national one, with seven live-music stages, a Virginia Folklife demonstration area, a folk-arts marketplace, children's activities and a slew of regional and ethnic foods.

The National Folk Festival moves from city to city, where it stays for three years. This year, the National Folk Festival moved to Butte, Mont., where it attracted about 60,000 people during its three-day run in July.

For more information about performers or to volunteer, visit www.richmondfolkfestival.org.

Contact Melissa Ruggieri at (804) 649-6120 or mruggieri@timesdispatch.com.