If you've been following my newsletter and my blog for awhile, you know that I say I've been married to Flamenco for X number of years.  Right now it's 18, but it will be 19 sometime in the Spring.  Unfortunately I don't remember when our exact anniversary is.  I just know Flamenco and I finally found each other in the Spring Quarter at UCLA in 1995.

Like in any marriage, we have had our ups and downs.  The downside?  Impatience, anger, and fear.  Conflicts of the ego, where I was getting ahead of myself, wanting things to be other than they were at the moment, an unwillingness to commit.  I've mainly been the problem.  I can admit that.  Flamenco has always been there for me.  When times were tight, Flamenco bought groceries.  When I was grieving death or heartbreak, Flamenco sang to me and held me up in its rhythmic waves, to the point where I've learned to breathe and float while resisting pain.

Flamenco has also taught me joy in small things.  The satisfaction that comes from the perfect arch of the eyebrow, that slight shoulder bounce on the 10 in Bulerias, that perfect hip roll or head roll.  The fun of shaking a scarf or my hair at the audience.  Flamenco taught me how to flirt and how to own my sensuality.  It didn't teach me to do it in a cheap way either, but in a badass way.  Alluring and defiant at the same time.  As a teacher told me once, "You're saying, 'You can look at me, but if you touch me, I'll cut you' ".

Flamenco taught me patience, hard work, and care for my craft.  I honestly believe I would not have really understood mindfulness meditation or yoga if I hadn't been through the rigors of Flamenco training first.  It literally has been blood, sweat, and tears.  Toenails ripped off, bruises from falling or hitting myself too hard when doing a slapping step, a busted knee that left me on a cane for awhile, cuts on my hands from the palmas or even my castanets, a sprained toe that turned black.  That one also left me on a cane for awhile.  There were hours of staring at myself from every angle in a mirror, hours of going over the same step over and over again to get the counts or the feeling just right, hours and hours and hours of classes.  The expense and experience of selling off your stuff, packing up the rest, and moving to another country for years, just to spend hours every day honing your craft.  So now, understanding that I am a baby at meditation is really easy to accept.  Flamenco was my first practice.

Flamenco has been gifted to me in this lifetime and honestly, I feel we've been together before.  It's the only thing that explains why I've been practicing snapping on multiple fingers ever since I was a little girl.  I've recently been a little out of love with Flamenco.  Again, it's not Flamenco's fault.  I think those of us who are married to Flamenco often abuse its sacredness with getting caught up in unnecessary stuff.  Pettiness, insecurity, avarice, fear, anger.  All of these things get in the way of our contract with Flamenco.  And it is a sacred one.  No one can tell me Flamenco is not sacred.  It is a musical form with roots that go as far back as 900AD.  It came together from a merging of various cultures, led by people who were resisting persecution.  They took their pain and suffering, faced it, and channeled it into beautiful music and dance that gave them a moment's freedom.  To me that is a gift from the divine, the cosmos, the universe, the collective consciousness, however you want to look at it. 

So Flamenco, I am now working on falling in love with you all over again.  As our relationship enters young adulthood, I am looking to mature.  I will be bringing in what I am learning from my mindfulness, loving-kindness, and gratitude practices to infuse our relationship with a renewed love and respect.  I will embrace the divine feminine that you have allowed me to channel more than ever before.  I will remind myself of your grounding force every time I place my nailed feet onto the tablao, acting as a tree, rooted in the earth.  Just like a tree, I will stretch my limbs to the skies, and like the wind that blows through its leaves, I will float across the floor with the aire that breathes me every second of every day. 

Flamenco, I vow to you to honor our sacred contract.  I am grateful to you for these almost 19 years.  I want to extend my gratitude to all lovers of Flamenco.  In the present, and in our future, may we always be mindful of our service to others through this art and that we may be of service to Flamenco itself.  May we all be happy, may we all be at peace, may we all be free.

The title of this entry loosely translates to "There comes a WOMAN!".  This is a jaleo, or motivating "shout-out" (like the now played out, "you go, girl") heard at the beginning of the first You Tube video below, featuring Pastora Galván.  I love it for many reasons.  One because it is declared by a man, two because of what I believe he means when he says it, and three because that meaning is so at the root of what I love about Flamenco.  When the video opens, you only see men onstage: the guitarists, the percussionist, the singers, all dressed in black.  Before you even catch a glimpse of her, you know the audience at Casa Patas, where the performance is happening, has already made note of Pastora's arrival.  There is some clapping and then..."¡Ahi viene una MUJÉR!".  Immediately following this declaration, the lower-left frame of the picture is engulfed by a flutter of pink ruffles, which you would think is very "girly", but then you see Pastora's full figure come in--curvy and in command, with a look of fierceness and control on her face.  She marches in slowly, and a compás, in rhythm, obviously knowing that she is taking full command of the stage.  There's no need to flit about; she holds her space and absorbs the cante, or singing. Her presence fuels the singers in return and you see them, El Bocaillo in particular (singer on the left next to the percussionist), reach deep into his gut for his letra, or verse.  This is not about being pretty.  Although Pastora is obviously gorgeous, she reflects his gut emotion and his guttural singing in her face and in her movement.  Even when they reach the end of the number, when everyone seems exalted of tension and there's a smile on her face, she still is dancing with all that womanly fierceness and all those curves.  That is what I most love about Flamenco.  It does not apologize and it does not constrain.  Even within all the rules of timing and structure, there is room for all of your emotion to come through and all of YOU to come through.  In fact, it is what is expected.  Pastora is only in her 20s too.  I am looking forward to seeing how her baile, or dance, ferments with life experience.  One of my teachers said, "Flamenco is like a fine wine; it gets better with age" and this is so true.

I recently found an example of an older and also iconic dancer, Eva La Yerbabuena, at the Bienal in Sevilla in 2006.  She is surrounded by a crowd of male musicians, also in an old-school ruffly dress and hair combs, this one bronze and coral.  She is curvy and very tiny.  The men look like they tower over her and yet, she is completely dominating that stage.  This performance is the Fin de Fiesta, or "end of the party", which is what it sounds like--the last number in a show.  This number is usually a bulerías, like it is here.  Bulerías comes from the word burlar, which means to tease or kid around.  Even though it's obvious in her dancing that she is having fun and sort of "joking around" in her moves, she's still demonstrating such a commanding presence.  She's floating on Miguel Poveda's cante, coming in with amazing contestaciones, or percussive responses, and thoroughly enjoying the sense that she's obviously in charge of the scene.  And they're all enjoying it too.  One of my favorite parts is where, to the novice eye, it may seem like she's doing nothing.  It's in the middle, when she's just standing facing the audience, with her hands on her hips, waiting.  She's just waiting and enjoying the wait.  That is something so hard to learn how to do in Flamenco, believe it or not.  It takes great command to know how to be comfortable just waiting onstage.  And to wait with her hands on her hips!  I love it.  It's such a classic womanly pose.  ¡Ole!

Flamenco is beautiful and powerful for men and women alike, but there is definitely something to be said about seeing a woman in such a classic, feminine costume, holding her space, making her presence known and felt.  ¡Ole a las guapas!