“Stay close to anything that makes you feel glad you’re alive” - Hafiz
I was 23 when I first got a glimpse of what was to become a lurking lifelong passion in the corner of my mind. I was a fashion journalist in London when a colleague took me to to see Blood Wedding - a Spanish musical which is a flamenco adaptation of Frederico Garcia Lorca’s play of the same name.
I’d loved the play and all of Lorca’s amazing work, so focussed on the heavy heat of Southern Spain as a metaphor for the stifling repression of women and most especially female sexuality. Of course like everything that is squashed down, it rises out of the shadows with more force and intensity than it ever would have had had it been given more air. For a young woman in London Lorca’s plays were simply about sex and the challenges that all women have in expressing and owning their own sexuality.
As an Irish Catholic girl I related to this big time.
But there was something else in Blood Wedding - it was this dance form that I’d never seen properly before (and believe me real flamenco is nothing like the watered down/sugared up tourist version) . It is a dance that exudes passion, pain and longing. A dance that lays the soul bare- the emotions are let loose as there is nowhere to hide. For a young woman who’d been brought up with the confining strictness of tap and ballet - both I still love - this dance was something else. It was bold, dangerous and a call to arms to take up space, a demand to show who you really are. The dancers seemed to pour out emotions from their bodies as the rhythm burst from their feet and arms.
Aw flamenco I fell in love with you at that moment. With its gypsy roots, it comes from the impossibly romantic Andalusia region of Southern Spain - flamenco is at heart a dark creative force, an expression of soul and struggle. For me no other dance really epitomises the art of life - the darkness and the light co-existing, the drive to push forward, to create, to love. To conquer the complexities of the moves one needs to get to the end of the dance, it can be pure torture as the arms and feet move away from each other, and the body twists and turns towards/against its passions/desires.
Flamenco is life. Its very form is imperfect, open to the performer’s interpretation. It’s messy, loud, bad for the joints and often out of control and it demands the maturity/suffering/life story of the older woman to really capture its spirit.
But I never took it up, even though I’m a lifelong dancer. Instead I travelled regularly to Seville to bask in the glory of the female dancers in little back street wooden floored tapas bars and was introduced to just how different Spanish Jerez (sherry) is to what we call sherry here in the UK. I felt so in awe of these women, who I mistakenly thought could only move like this as the flamenco spirit coursed through their very bloodline. Such a contradiction that these women seemed to ooze female power, confidence and liberation; whilst the roots of the dance come from such female repression.
The ambiguity really appeals to me and holds many life lessons I feel. More on this in a moment. But first..
Last year everything changed and I was no longer allowed to be a spectator on my guilty pleasure - life does indeed move in mysterious ways. The Flamenco Festival held every June at Sadler’s Wells in London was cancelled! I, like many others, was distraught. At my last visit I’d marvelled at how the new genre of flamenco was moving away from the garish dresses and flower adorned hairstyles- instead an all female troupe had burst onto the stage dressed only in black with hair slicked back into uncompromising austere buns. I could see how this dance was moving into a new era - a kind of meditation on a whole new more out there female power that no longer had to exist in the shadows.
“Dancing is the loftiest, the most moving, the most beautiful of the arts, because it is no mere translation or abstraction of life; it it life itself
- Havelock Ellis
What to do? Well like everything in life I feel that there is a time and a place. I could not live without flamenco so here was my chance. I signed up at the City Lit education centre in London for online flamenco classes. Maybe it was the fact that they were online that made me feel less self conscious. Who knows but I am beyond thrilled that I did this.
Since then every Thursday morning I show up with a group of 10 other bold women from across the world, as Dani our teacher leads us through this extraordinary dance. We may be stomping, swirling and taking up space in our living rooms in London, Newcastle and Hull - whilst long suffering partners have to explain the noise on their conference calls - but in our souls and hearts for those two hours we are transported onto the rooftops of the old Arabic and gypsy quarters of Granada facing the Alhambra - an ancient mosque, palace and fortress built by the Moorish monarchs.
And now I’m signed up for life. Who cares I’m fair skinned and in my 50s - this dance is ideal for the older woman - and there are certainly some similarities to Irish dancing. And what is so strange is that it has reminded me about what art has to teach us about life. I’m not sure I’ve ever found any body movement that says quite as much about life as flamenco. Even my beloved yoga, which is so important for uniting the body spirit, doesn’t match up to the life lessons that I’m taking from this extraordinary dance. So please allow me to share them with you - and just maybe I will ignite a tiny bit of the passion that I have. Honestly I’m so sad that I don’t have a flamenco friend - YET - to share this passion with:
What flamenco has taught/reminded me about life:
💃🏽life is full of dark and light - the secret is to accept and then to find your own movement, rhythm and style. Stick to this and just keep going, it may well hurt like hell at times, but eventually it all turns out ok in the end.
💃🏽owning your own space/taking up space is an essential skill for all performances - including work performances. You want to influence, look powerful, authoritative - learn to take space on a stage. This dance teaches you to do this better than any other in my humble opinion.
💃🏽we all hurt deep inside. Allow these feelings to surface, deal with them, get them out there. It is keeping things squashed inside that is really dangerous. They simmer and fester and come out anyhow - only in a way that damages ourselves, or others. Keep feeling, keep expressing, keep creating
💃🏽flamenco is frustrating, difficult to learn, you fall over, you get of step, you feel humiliated, you feel you’ve let your other dancers down/held them back… and then you keep going, you keep practising and suddenly everything falls into place and you are dancing/walking on air and it is the most joyful feeling that there is
💃🏽show up. Sometimes you don’t need to do anything else
💃🏽get out of your head and into your body - it’s a way better feeling and releases all that creative energy
💃🏽act - even if you feel very afraid, even if you don’t know where to start - do something
💃🏽mistakes are opportunities in disguise
💃🏽always prepare - but take risks, be curious, be open
I hope I’ve inspired you in some tiny way. In our Rock My Age coaching and retreats we so often see people stuck in emotions which is so obvious in the way they hold their bodies. This is limiting and uncomfortable. I’ll be sharing more tips in the weeks to come about how to work better with our bodies and in our summer retreats (fingers crossed) this is an area we will be focussing on. Releasing tension and getting comfortable in our bodies is so important to showing up as our best and most authentic selves.
Love to hear your comments, views, discussions or please do dm me if you feel like giving flamenco a go. If I can convert one flamenco fan through this article I will be beyond thrilled.
Buenas Noches and warmest love
Debbie 🌹
Listen to your intuition
take up space
stand tall and beautifully in your female power
fall down and fall again but never give up
the moves are unbelievably complicated and it so so frustrating - but when it falls