I always thought that Flamenco was a lot of bluster. You know, Gypsies acting proud and angry, clapping and stomping around the stage with lots of head tosses. Other than the fabulous ruffles, it seemed overly masculine to me. Well, there is a lot of clapping and stomping, and the posture is very straight and proud. But when we visited Andalucia (in southern Spain), the home of Flamenco, I learned that there is a lot more to it.
In Seville there is an excellent Museum of Flamenco Dance It is hard to find in the warren of narrow stone streets that meet at crazy angles and all look the same. Zoe and I got lost one night in the pouring rain trying to find it. That was fun. But the museum is very modern and informative, with lots of video displays, which is so important when you are talking about dance and music. I learned that there are many different rhythms and styles of dance (called Palos) within the umbrella of flamenco, including Bulerías, Alegrías, Tango (no, not the Argentine one. Completely different.), Soleás, Tarantas, Sevillanas and more. Some are slow and mournful, others fast and intense, some playful and happy. The museum also has performances and lessons. I highly recommend it if you are in Seville. It also explains the origins of Flamenco, which came from the Roma (Gypsy) people who originally came from India. Here is the wikipedia article on Flamenco.
The Roma have a long history of being poor migrant outcasts (and they still are stereotyped in Spain and Italy at least as people most likely to be begging or pickpocketing on the street). Their music, even when upbeat, has a touch of melancholy, like the Blues. Flamenco is tragic and (perhaps sometimes overly) dramatic and soulful. It must be danced with guitar and singer. There is improvisation. The dancing is usually done solo.
The rhythms are very complicated, with lots of syncopation. Many songs are based on twelve counts, but they are not evenly divided into three sets of four like the most western music. My teachers count to ten, and then to two, before beginning the cycle again.
Like so: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 1, 2. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 1, 2.
and the accents are irregularly spaced, for example: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12.
I am not used to this, so I often kind of lose the beat and have a hard time knowing when to start. And often songs are fast-paced, which makes counting even harder. And the songs have llamadas, or standardized breaks in the songs, which have a different rhythmic patterns.
There is a lot of footwork, similar to tap dancing. Stomps (golpes), toes (plantas), heels (tacones), and complicated combinations of these performed at lightening speed. Instead of Tap's bouncy feel, Flamenco footwork is grounded in the earth. You POUND the floor, but your ankles and knees absorb all the impact so that your torso remains still, which means a lot of abdominal and glute control. Your feet should be kept very close together, almost touching. My shoes are low-heeled character shoes with nails pounded into the soles at the toes and heels.
In my class we drill simple step combos for almost half the class time, starting slowly and increasing tempo. It can be exhausting to concentrate on keeping a steady beat while holding our shoulders down, back straight, tummy tight, etc. My teacher, Laura, at the Jose de la Vega dance studio, is a drill sergeant. She has a stick that she pounds on the floor and she yells at us not the rush, to keep our feet together, to lift our heels higher, to keep our spines up to the sky, etc.
The arms are relatively simple, the key being that the elbows are always lifted up and pulled back for that classic Spanish line. One must lift one's chest up, but push shoulders and lats down, to create a long neck. We spend fifteen minutes just holding our arms out like Spanish scarecrows while rotating our wrists in the most exaggerated fashion, first circling towards the inside, then towards the outside. It makes my deltoids scream. I kind of like it. The pain. The suffering. It makes me feel powerful, like a bullfighter (without the killing).
I am reminded of the dance school in Cambodia which Mark and I visited, where the children were contorting their hands and feet in the most unnatural positions-- hands flexed with fingers curving backwards, feet flexed on legs lifted just so. Older students were correcting younger ones-- tilting their heads to just the right angle. It's amazing how training to perfect a particular aesthetic requires so much repetition and intense concentration. When I was a child taking ballet lessons, I never understood this, and I found the repetition and striving for perfection tiring and boring. Now I revel in it.
After an hour of very rigid technique, we have an hour of choreography where we have to put arms and feet and rhythm together with the music, and make it live and breathe. My teacher is wise to advise us to relax and dance from our bellies. It is here where we let our hips move and one can articulate through the ribcage so that we do not look overly uptight, and we let sensuality enter in. It's an interesting mix of graceful hands, strong and forceful arms and shoulders, undulating feminine hips and skirts, but controlled and powerful, slightly masculine footwork.
To be a soloist, one must have the utmost confidence, because all eyes are on you. I read that female flamenco dancers often peak in their 40s, when they have the maturity and the experience to really dance with passion and soul. Since I will be forty this year, I decided that this is the dance for me. I've done the sexy salsa thing and the graceful, happy hula thing. Now it's time to get tough. To get serious. To dig deep and dance from the gut. To embrace the sadness of life and summon the power and the passion within me. I am too old to be shy or embarrassed. I know who I am and how to use my body. That is what dancing flamenco is to me.
This is the one-hour intro to flamenco class that Zoe & I took in Sevilla in November 2011 at the Museum of Flamenco Dance.
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