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Years ago, when I was even more naive, I made a serious, if short-lived, cross-cultural attempt to get Anglos, Hispanics and Pueblo Indians to dance together regularly.

I wasn't talking about your "American Bandstand" style of dancing but about traditional, what we would call "folk," dancing. My thinking was that we could learn each other's forms and do them together - and then, eventually, invent new, common forms that combined all three.

The idea was to bring the cultures closer without destroying their differences: a those-who-spin-together-win-together approach.

The weird thing was that the Pueblo Indians I talked with - a small group of Acoma dancers I'd stumbled into - were receptive. Yes, the dances we talked about doing together were those the tribe performed openly for all visitors. But I knew the Pueblos had survived hundreds of years of Hispanic and Anglo domination by closely guarding portions of their culture, including certain dances with special significance.

I was stunned and grateful. The idea never ultimately came to anything on my part, mostly because of the frantic crush of work. I did end up dancing once with the Acoma troupe at the finish of one of its performances at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque. It's something the dancers regularly and generously encouraged visitors to do. It wasn't pretty.

What reminded me of this was a Tribune article Aug. 21, with photos, by Steven St. John, titled "A sacred path." It was about the celebration by the Hispanics of Chilili of the feast day of their village's patron saint, with Mass and a procession of community members and Matachines - costumed dancers who look to me a lot like Pueblo dancers, though the Matachines are said to have originated in old Spain.

Of course, Pueblo communities also have feast days keyed to Roman Catholic saints - starting with Mass and followed by a procession of community members and costumed dancers. Pueblos long have performed Matachin dances themselves. They have become experts over the centuries at adopting foreign customs, as a means of preserving their own traditions sotto voce.

Pueblos long have recorded cross-cultural encounters - for better and for worse - in their dances. The Matachin dance is an example. So is the Comanche Dance, which represents the Pueblos' erstwhile enemy. Hispanic communities, to their credit, also haven't been shy about sharing or adopting Pueblo customs.

It's different with Anglos, it seems to me. We've tended to roll over indigenous cultures without paying much attention, perhaps because we're so big, so aggressive, so successful, at least in the short term.

Eventually, I imagine, the Pueblos will concoct an Anglo Dance. For example, there already is a very old, Anasazi petroglyph - the "All American Man" - representing Americans, on a cliff in Canyonlands National Park in Utah.

I wonder what the dance will say about us. Too bad we aren't all working on it together.