A Buscar Flamenco, A Encontrar Flamenco

Flying back from Madrid was leaving Spain, but I promised myself it would not be leaving flamenco. Desperate for a flamenco class, a tableau, a flamenco guitarist playing in the park, anything flamenco, I moved to Chicago and signed up for a class. Although the teacher wore a polka dot skirt and shoes with nails, it fell flat. I left disappointed, dreaming of Yara, wishing for a moment in which I was not learning a step or a pattern, but learning to be flamenco, learning to make music with my feet and art with my arms. Standing in a class with people who did not love the art of flamenco, who lacked the desire to show meaning with motion or be a musician, artist, and dancer in one single breathe made me homesick for the first place I chose to be my home.

Following my flamenco spirit, I practiced in my house, making anyone available clap rhythms to the farruca, allegrias, or the bombera. Analyzing flamenco songs on the train, watching videos, constantly missing and remembering my flamenco life, I started to see flamenco in the “cotidiano”, in my daily life.

Maybe there is flamenco in buying a one way plane ticket to Chicago, with no job, no apartment, and a and a messy plan. Maybe there is flamenco in making everything work, even when it is hard.  Months later, I found my way to a ballet class, which I had not taken in years, my ballerina dreams cast aside, with the flamenco that I constantly carry I discovered that you can fall forward and back, point your toe, and work on the barre with duende, with a flamenco soul.

Although still searching for authentic flamenco in Chicago, throughout history, the greatest of the great were forced to leave flamenco due to politics and oppression, but those dancers lived flamenco, and so will I. 

Beauty vs. Reality

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.

Shoe Love

We all have different ways of watching time pass. For me, in Spain, it is watching the leather of my shoes get softer and softer, more formed to my feet, more real. The shoes of the dancers I dream of being are soft, malleable, and gorgeous.

Flamenco shoes are hand-made with nails hammered into the bottom to make the galloping sounds of flamenco. You can’t dance flamenco without your shoes, but they can’t dance without you. All dancers have a special relationship their shoes, but in flamenco they are not only a tool to help you dance, they are an instrument.  They make music, and a flamenco dancer is dancing, in part, to the sound of her shoes.

Growing up I always wanted to wear heels, but I was never allowed. Now I spend more time in high heels than I could have ever imagined. Some girls are shoe girls and I have fallen in love with a pair. As I tie my laces for class, I smile, touch the leather, and love my time in Spain.

FanFare

Fans. Who would have thought the opening a fan and essentially walking with it would be my biggest challenge in Spain?  As I mentioned earlier, we are ending our choreography by dancing with fans, or abanicos.  Sometimes I feel very Spanish, but when it comes to fans, I am decidedly not.  Recently it has been hard to find holes in my Spanish vocabulary, but I did not know the word for fanning yourself, abanicar, which led to me spending half of a class staring blankly at my teacher when she said Explicame porque no estás abanicando.” (Tell me why you are not fanning). After about 30 minutes of this, I realized what she was saying. That did not mean I had an answer for her though. I had not been that much of a mess in class in months. I was already intimidated by added more choreography and this was not helping.

As I looked around the room even the people who just started dancing where handling their fans like pros and I could not even open mine.  I had seen fans in tourist shops, but I did not realize the extent to which fans were a part of Spanish culture.

I asked a friend of mine who started dancing around when I did how she knew how to handle her fan so well. She told me that she had been playing with fans from her mother and grandmother since she was a little girl. My classmates fan expertise was starting to make sense to me. When I first got here I saw tons of women on the metro cooling off with fans. I thought it was pretty and a good idea, but I did not give it a second thought.  However, if there are fans in your house, and you are a little girl, of course you are going to play with them. This gives you a serious advantage in Flamenco. I have been practicing just opening my fan all week, and I have to say it is not going that well. I am hoping to post a video soon, but I am waiting until I get a little better.

So after my personal fan fiasco, I decided to learn about how fans came to be a part of flamenco.  After a little library time, a little google, and some random conversations waiting in line for a flamenco show, I have more of an idea.  Fans were traded on the “silk road” in the 15^th century from Asia to Spain.  This is when flamenco was growing into the dance it is today, so it makes sense that these new beautiful objects became a part of the dance.

Typical Spanish Fan

Fans in flamenco have always been a way for women to show their more feminine aspects. Flamenco is a dance of love, tragedy, and power, and the use of fans gives women a moment to be coquettish and cute. Of course, there are many interpretations of fans in flamenco; however they are typically elegant and flirty.

I am not even close to dancing with a fan yet (mostly I stumble around lost and panicked), but I see the appeal. I feel very pretty holding my fan in front of me in the mirror, and I am hoping that by June, I can “abanicar” with the best of them.

Feminine and Flirty, Perfect for me!

Feminism and Flamenco

In my life passion has always been viewed as weakness. If you have passion, especially as a women, you can not control your emotions and you can not be successful.  Losing your head to passion is not something that strong professional women can do.

Through flamenco I have found a world where passion is not only understood, but valued.  Yesterday in class one of my friends walked in late. My teacher, Yara, who can be a bit harsh, asked her why she was late and where she had been. My friend responded apologetically that she was at work late.  Yara yelled back “Hay una razón para faltar clase, si tu chico te dejó y te queda deprimida. ” She continues, really getting into it now ” No se puede faltar la clase para tu trabajo o si estes enferma, solo si te quedes deprimida.” (Translation: There is one reason to miss class, if your man has left you and you are left depressed. You can not miss class for work or illness, only depression.)

My attitude and snarkiness has not left just because I am in Spain, so I responded “NO, that is when we should dance, because we need to move on.” She gave me a look that clearly said “oh honey, you are so lost.” After thinking for a second Yara said “luego bailamos el dolor, pero primero tenemos que sentirlo.” (later you will dance the pain, first you have to feel it)

I’ve been thinking about this for days.  Women who dance flamenco are powerful women. The can slam their feet into the ground at a million miles an hour. They can live on very little money because they live on dance. They can practice one hand movement for four hours without complaining. Flamenco dancers have danced through political oppression and economic depression. They valued themselves and their art when no one else did. These women are first-class feminists. Yet they feel emotion. They let themselves be hurt by love. I always thought that if I let myself be heart-broken I was being weak and going against everything the feminist movement stood for.  However everyday I am inspired by these empowered women. I needed a few days to wrap my brain around this paradox.

I am starting to see things a little differently now. If I want to dance, and I want to dance, I need to feel all emotions, and I need to feel them intensely. You can dance every step perfectly and never be a flamenco dancer if you don’t feel the passion. Dancing flamenco is not about making it to every class or practicing every step in your room. To dance flamenco, you have to live flamenco. Even if that means crawling under your covers for a few days and feeling depressed. Later we can dance that. Even in that moment we are strong women. Later we can show our power to the world.

Alegrias etc: a quick background

I know that not everyone has the time to dedicate to studying flamenco, so here is a quick background. (Oh and if you don’t study flamenco, I am sure it just because of time, there is no other reason I could imagine).

It is generally said that Flamenco began as a fusion of dances with Roman, Byzantine, Sephardic, and Moorish elements. This conversion of dances, cultures, and styles became flamenco in the 15th century.  Many people and regions in Spain claim flamenco, but it is a gypsy art from Andalucía. Flamenco can be many things and it is an art that allows for interpretation and fusion, however, flamenco is not anything. Flamenco exists through rhythm, body movement, and musical style. To understand any one of these aspects truly takes a lifetime. The Spanish phrase: hay mas vida que día is appropriate here. It translates to “there is more life than day”, or we don’t have time for everything.  In this case “there is more flamenco than day”.

My general overview, which will not do the beautiful art of flamenco justice, can be supplemented by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamenco and a year in Spain taking classes. You are all up for that right?

Flamenco songs are categorized by there rhythm and there emotions. There are 12 different types of flamenco songs and eight of them can be danced to.  Each type has a name. I am currently working on dancing an “alegría”, which is most notably unique for it’s 12 beat cycle rhythm and happy feel.

Alegrías originated in Cadíz (where I am spending my spring break, not by coincidence) and are one of the strictest forms of flamenco.

This is me practicing Alegrías!

Alegrías traditionally begin with “solo de pies”, which is just dancing “tapping” and creating rhythm with their shoes. Then a “llamada de guitara”, during which the guitarist plays a stylized version of the 12 beat rhythm and the dance quietly interprets with beautiful but quiet dance. Then there is the “llamada de cante”, different than the “llamada de guitara”, which includes a walking entrance and foot work to signal the singer to begin his song”. Then there is what foriegners would think of as the actual dance or the “castellana”, which a mix of tapping and dancing.  Traditionally Alegrías end with a “bulerías” (another type of dance), but that is less fashionable at the moment. We are ending ours by dancing with fans (also traditonal).

I know that’s a ton of info, so for fun check out this video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kJOM4q1pUM Eva “La Yerbabuena” is very famous and I have seen her dance! Enjoy!

Education and Flamenco

Last night I went to a Flamenco class that was the epitome of perfect inclusion. The flamenco classes for beginners are open to the public and different people show up every week. It is the first week of some and the tenth week of others. The teacher has no idea who will show up on any given day. Yet she teaches all of us at our level, without separating us in any way, challenging every student and making us all feel like we can dance.

 

During my time at SUNY Geneseo I heard many arguments against full inclusion. Most of them were based on the idea that it would be impossible for a teacher to differentiate that much. Some people went as far to say that it would not benefit the students. I never believed it, but I also never saw a perfect model of inclusion until last night. I have read theories on inclusion, studied best practice, watched expert teachers and experimented with my own ideas. I did not really understand that all it really takes is caring about each students learning and paying attention to their needs.

 

I am sure some people will argue that dance class is easier to make inclusive than a regular class, but I do not agree. Teaching flamenco is incredibly challenging, especially since at the end, everyone needs to feel they have a mastery of the dance so they can go home and practice. There is not a text book or set curriculum on how to teach Flamenco. It is an expert in the field sharing her knowledge with her students, while letting them bring their own personality to the traditional dance. We were learning and creating knowledge together.

 

It was amazing to me that my teacher has such a perfect model of inclusion without studying how to teach, but what allowed her to do this was her passion, kindness, and real knowledge of her subject. All of these things are often lacking in a public classroom.  She did everything that pre-service teachers are told to do, repeat and rephrase, model, give individual assistance without modeling, maintain a sense of humor etc… Except none of it was fake.  You cannot fake a passion for teaching, whether it is flamenco or history you have to love it. She did and because of it she was exceptional.

 

She created a positive learning environment in five minutes. I have been told by professors that this is impossible. Her attitude set the tone for the class. Other students could have easily been frustrated with each other, especially me, but all they were was supportive. She modified the dance in different ways for each student on the spot. This is not an easy task with a dance as traditional as flamenco. I believe that if she can do it, so can every teacher is every subject.

 

I came home from this class more enthusiastic and passionate about teaching than I have ever been. I also walked away thinking that I can be a flamenco dancer. It’s a stretch for sure, but it’s not out of reach either. Every teacher should make every student feel this way.

 

After my experiences at college and in the public school system I was hesitant about full and real inclusion because as I tried to promote it, it was met with such negativity. All of that is gone. I will have a positive inclusive classroom. I just hope I can do it as well as Gizelle, who taught me more about education than I learned in 4 years.

 

 

A blog! From Hannah? Finally!

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I know almost all of you have been hounding me to write a blog since….well, I lived in Costa Rica, but your patience has paid off. Here it is! So the big decision was what to write about.  Being a vegetarian … Continue reading →