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!