Yesterday I resumed my flamenco dance practice. It's been a few years without, that started with a broken toe, and extended into a prolonged time off. I started studying flamenco in '98, with Inés Arrubla, the first dancer to offer flamenco classes in the Pioneer Valley in Western Massachusetts. I jumped at the opportunity as soon as she opened the door of her studio. I guess my passion for flamenco comes first from the guitar sounds. And since I figured I can never learn to play a decent flamenco on the guitar, I can at least try to express it with my body. It has been a wonderful journey. It took some years, not months, without exaggeration, just to get to a point where my body started accepting the flamenco form: head raised high up above the shoulders; shoulders down, chest up and forward, like a bull's horns, elbows having a life of their own, almost always away from the body, feet that work as a percussion, and so on... The hands, in all their myriad of expressions, are by far the most difficult to master. I am still working on it...
So, I want to talk about hands...
Hands say so much. And hands never lie. You can change your face, stretch it fold-less, you can tuck in your belly, your can wear a wig, or a glass eye, you can reduce the size of your toes (no kidding!), but you can't do much with your hands. See
Zed Nelson's Love Me Nr.16 for a proof. And how ironic that the subtitle says "Age undisclosed" while in fact, Sally's hands tell her age, loud and clear. I watch my own hands change with age. And I know they are telling the truth.
In flamenco, the hand becomes like a flower. It opens and closes, it breathes along with the dance. You can do an entire dance with your hand alone, without ever getting up from a chair. One of the most beautiful things about flamenco is that you don't have to be 16, or even 35 to look great when you dance. In fact, I believe, the flamenco dancer becomes ever more noble, and more expressive with age. It's the scarsity of movement, its carefully chosen expressions that become loaded with emotion and meaning. Because you, the onlooker, are hungry for it. And because you know that the dancer has a lot to say. She has lived a life.
Like my mother. No, she doesn't dance flamenco. For her, dancing flamenco would be an unimaginable luxury. She has lived all her life, humbly and simply, finding fulfillment in serving others. She has suffered like no other in her life. But always, always found joy in the little things around her. And she has been contagious with that skill.
So, here are my mother's hands. The hands that cradled me when I was small. The hands that would cradle me still. If I asked...
The hands that cradled me. 2009. Rīga, Latvia
