Dance is an art where through the body and expressions of a dancer the ultimate art of dancing is portrayed. A real, genuine, professional and conscious dancer rouses him or herself to a frenzy of activities, movements, undulations and beauty. Some dances demonstrate slow, dreamy and graceful coordinated moves, and others portray more ritualistic, brisk and cadenced motions. Every choreographed dance is based on a harmonious movements of the head, the neck, the hand, the arms, the shoulders (épaulement), the hips, the legs, the feet, the turns (pirouettes) in coordination with the torso and abdomen. The combination requires high state of flexibility, control, alertness and involvement.
Dancing is the rhythmical art adapted to certain music to express an emotion or an idea, to narrate a story, or to connote an event. Dancing, in all its forms, expands the definition of art to encompass anything the least bit irreverent, yet its casual reflections of real life is, in actuality, so meticulously composed and choreographed devoid of artifice, and it taps into the highest form of art as a state of consciousness and collective memory. What happens when the nightmarish undercurrents of music confronts the nightmarish reality of interacting and explosion of emotions, is what dancing made of.
Flamenco dancing is a combination of belly-dancing, ballet and folklore choreographed by the Andalusian gypsies and through the centuries retained its Moorish Islamic heritage. The approach to Flamenco is like a pilgrim prosternating before a shrine, with much awe, genuine sincerity, and above all, with that selectivity of vision, that openness of mind, that acuteness of hearing and that warmth of heart, together, they will serve as an adequate and proper metaphor for what may be the greatest performance.
Flamenco dancing, although sometimes portrays memento mori settings, is refreshing and captivating as a new morning, with its warm but unobtrusive sun, falling with lucid abandon against the walls of your heart, as Flamenco dancers create and perform renditions of genius, reflecting more than the Spaniards’ civic pride and wonderment. Flamenco dancers exhibit a jazz musician’s instinct for balancing harmony and dissonance.
As much as Ballet, Waltz and Tango, the silhouettes of Flamenco’s male dancers demonstrate grace through strength and virility, whereas female dancers embody charm, eroticism and femininity. Both experience the sexual awareness of their partner.
To enjoy and savor the Flamenco dance performance, the soul has to capture the physical, emotional and spiritual essence of each move, turn, swing and touch. You feel your body mesmerized, paralyzed and captivated, yet the out of body experience is exhilarating, enchanting, and reacting to the tense emotions manifested in hearing the pure cante jondo, the breathtaking heartrending vocal style of authentic Flamenco melodying to the sounds of a guitar.
Flamenco dancing is proud, vigorous, subtle, fiery, manipulative, articulated, languid and above all dignified. It is a communication of narratives through dancing set in motion by complex and rigid swings, poses, beats and shouts coupled with impulses, beauty and defiance.
For a habitué, I don’t drink alcohol and coffee, I sip, and when it comes to Flamenco, I do not watch and hear, I live, and, of course, I feel divine.
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