The previous article>>

Olga Balla

 Spanish dance flamenco

 This dance is more than life

Published in the Rossiiskaya Gazeta (weekend issue) of November 15, 2003 

 Flamenco, a Spanish Gypsy (Gitano) dance, is rapidly winning the Russian mass culture. To learn dancing, the haves go to Spain. The haves-not are contended with local dancing studios. What happened with the inhabitants of the Russian cities? Not that they are insecure, on the contrary, they are socially fit and financially well doing. Yet, they go for the dances of Spanish misfits, tramps and mistreated outcasts. Why?

Is this the same “Spanish zeal” mocked by Kozma Prutkov¹ already in the one before last century? “I want to Seville, I want a guitar, I want Inezille, I want to cantar…” Like there it would get started, cool and gorgeous. Is it a freak? The same that places flamenco among belly dancing and diving, sushi bars and Celtic music, making it another love of bored European city dwellers? Why picking up this one among the myriads of exotic borrowings?

The explanation of contemporary flamenco lovers is simple. This is a way of showing one’s inner self, not possible in any other forms of culture available to them, and a liberty from the bondages. Disciplined by everyday rules, the bankers, lawyers, business people and law enforcement officers have finally a chance of getting rid of those and release their surplus energy. Anxiety, discontent, grief and passion, everything that does not fit in their boiled and packed existence is danced out, and it feels better.

The contemporaries, at least since Freud, have got used to the idea of being torn apart by the destructive forces ill-placed in human culture and civilization. Humans know how to suppress and tame themselves since infancy. Yet, these forces rush out time and again in hostilities, family scenes, nervous breakdowns and mental disorders. Every culture has to create and painstakingly support techniques to defend humans against themselves. In some cultures, the religion is the answer. In Russia, this seems to be customary kitchen talks with friends, keeping diaries and writing verses “into the desk”… In a non-verbal tradition, this may be sports, alcohol and tobacco, striding along the streets…

The dance has a miracle power, just being rhythmic. Like poetry differs from prose, strides as a means of calming down the worried minds are miles away from dancing flamenco. The soul gets enchanted by the rhythms of the body. It is not for nothing that flamenco is often compared to witchcraft and mystics. The body and sole, the nature and culture forget their differences in dancing, as they fuse and talk each other out. Apart from dancing, the same is possible only in love.

By its essence and origins, flamenco is a terrifying and “deep” dance. It is on the brink of life and death. They say only those who have lived through a torture, loss or disaster are able to perform a genuine dance. The trouble strips the nerves of life, and flamenco is a dance of naked nerves. In Spanish tradition, it is accompanied by cante hondo, a deep singing. Shouting out the roots of a soul, the “black sound”, like it is not music.

At the same time, flamenco is highly regulated, stringent, full of conventions and even ceremonial. Flamenco is a dance of lonely people. This is, perhaps, the sole folk dance that does not necessarily need a partner. The frantic passion changes hands with the rigorous chastity: male dancers may not touch female partners even unintentionally.

 This violence and impromptu require a tremendous training of body and soul muscles and a stringent discipline. Some say flamenco has no erotica. This is a dialogue, contentious and competitive dance between two springs of life – masculine and feminine. You set out to outperform the partner. You set out to dance your partner to death. Flamenco makes an art out of something inherently cruel and ruthless set by our culture and civilization as the rules of life. It is a thrust, aggression, rivalry, discipline, solitude…

Flamenco is an ancient art of burning the dark.  

Olga Balla

⁽¹⁾ Kozma Prutkov is a fictional author invented by Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy and his cousins, three Zhemchuzhnikov brothers, Alexei, Vladimir and Alexander, during the later part of Nicholas I of Russia's authoritarian reign. The four distinguished satirical poets used this pseudonym as a collective pen name to publish aphorisms, fables, epigrams, satiric, humorous and nonsense verses.

 The previous article>>