Choreographic depth of field

I want to remember my modern dance, especially my Limón modern dance training when choreographing flamenco dances.

It's easy to rely on basic structure only in flamenco dance choreography - straight, diagonal lines traveling across the floor, circles and squares drawn by dancers in upright only, standing positions, similar in more ways than any flamenco dancer cares to admit to ballet - elegant, beautiful, and extended.

Recently, I keep coming back to upper body spirals, arms spiraling, whirling and twisting, which is an unexpected element in flamenco that I believe often looks good, and if the message is meant to be powerful or strong, works well, and sometimes brilliantly well.

What sets a dancer, group of dancers or a choreographer apart is something I think about every day, especially when I've recently seen several performances. Just performing a traditional choreography is an amazing enough feat - it is challenging every step of the way with it's reliance on traditional dance structure, music, and the dancer's impressionistic interpretation of the meaning behind the letras.

Take the soleares. You may see a dancer perform this dance and it could be amazing and moving. Or it could leave you cold, and you aren't sure why this is so. What did s/he forget along the way while in the process of creating this dance? Was it lack of training and/or technique, no traditional structure, a cool approach, a disconnect with the music or lyrics? Was the dance static or too conservative, or too wild and brittle?

Movement itself creates meaning, and great movement creates clearly stated energy. As audience, we all know it when we see it.

I'm going to explore those straight lines, angles, circles, spirals, whirls, low and high turns, thrusts, two-dimensional poses, level changes, abrupt and slow tempo changes, and more, and embed it into the structured improvisation that is a flamenco dance. I'll let you know how it turned out!

Tangos de Málaga - an antiwar piece

Is the new work we will present at ARTTalk in Pasadena on March 20th. I'm working on bringing all forces together to make this the big one, or one of the big ones via creation and interpretation.
It has the right message - "No empleéis la violencia - don't do violence."

When the public sees a flamenco dance, they often see the machismo, and interpret the movement as arrogant. Indeed, the Spanish mentality as seen via flamenco dancing is often thought to be these to the casual viewer. But that strength, anger, sorrow is the cutting, biting edge of the artist, and Tangos de Málaga is the quintessential anti-war flamenco piece - angry, strong, sorrowful, and powerful.

Flamenco musings, revisions and histories

First blog - flamenco musings, revisions and histories

Flamenco dictates and drives whatever I do, whether I like it or not. I seek, dream about, work through and create flamenco. The striving never ends, though sometimes I wish it really would.

Holistically, I consider myself something of a revisionist - a modern dancer caught up in the aura and romance of flamenco. I originally changed course from modern to flamenco to continue dancing into old (or at least, older, age). In this course I did come to love flamenco.

But more than that, I love Spain - it's identity, food, culture, traveling to and from it. Being in Madrid first thing in the morning after that international flight and finding food at the Museo del Jamon in the Puerta del Sol - delicious beer (caña), chorizo and tortilla Español. That first, absolute must see look at the Plaza Mayor, and the visit to Maty's to buy flamenco shoes off the rack. The bumpy train ride (the cercancia) down to Granada through the mountains, and arriving in that rural/urban center. The casa museos in both Granada and in Fuente Vaqueros, where García Lorca lived and worked - now that's it - Lorca is the key to the love of the country. And Dali, Buñuel, the lot of them, all of the artists from the original Resi - the Residencia de Estudiantes on Pinar Street in Madrid.

Real drive and the love of flamenco is hard to come by if you are an artist of the style or wish to become one, because flamenco is so hard - my God it is hard to do this style - rhythm comes most easily at first, but not those hard beats. It's like learning Spanish - the 1st semester is fine, but not semesters 2-6! In flamenco, the use of the arms, hands and style are hard, though it does get more settled in. So I'm not talking about the romance of it at all, no, it's the nitty gritty that ends up consuming you. The perfection of one minute of it, then 10 minutes, and the a continuous 20 minutes of dance and music.

So when my students ask me "when do we get to perform?" I say I don't know yet, maybe next month, or maybe, not for 10 years. How much can you practice dance and attend class? How naturally talented are you rhythmically and musically? How much money do you have to invest in classes, attending shows, going to Spain every year to study and observe? Are you willing to learn Spanish? How patient are you? If you are or can become these, you are on the way to a lifelong pursuit that is beautiful, frightening, wonderful, challenging, exhausting, hateful, fun, invigorating, frustrating, and more.