Anyone who knew me from the ages of 12-17 would be very surprised that I have completely dedicated myself to a dance that is not entirely about beauty. A girl who wakes up at 5:30am to straighten her hair before high school is looking for cover girl beauty. Dedication to flamenco did not seem likely. I would like to describe myself as an aesthetic, but is any adolescent really? Later, I looked for beauty through art, but even then I was looking for beauty as something false, not the beauty that is the reflection of life.
Flamenco is essentially a dance of emotion and power. Women who dance flamenco do not have a specific body type, and although every movement is expressive, the goal of flamenco is to provoke emotion.
Flamenco shows life’s most heartbreaking moments and the most joyous. Flamenco is beautiful because of it’s emotional power, not because the dancers could be models. Every aspect of life can be expressed through flamenco, and not every moment of life is airbrushed to perfection. The more real a dance is, the more heartbreaking, happy, or haunting, the more it is flamenco.
Happiness is found in flamenco, but flamenco happiness is the ultimate peace and joy that has the power to bring you to tears. To dance such a full range of motion that is to show the ugliest and the prettiest moments of life. The life you experience until age 17 is not enough to dance flamenco. Flamenco is a dance for adults. For people who have felt all the loss in the world and all the joy.
Sometimes art tries to distract the world from reality, but flamenco intensifies it, making it not an escape but an outlet. Flamenco is not the cover of vogue, but the best novel you’ve ever read. Luckily you are not 15 forever and loving reality more than beauty is a gift of growing up.
loveandflamenco 