When you are in a moment of blockage, tension, pressure, or creative conflict and you don’t feel comfortable with your dance nor identify with it, you enter a kind of hidden competition. You compare yourself and value yourself based on others. You only see your own void, and it gets bigger and bigger. With the need to return to yourself, you enter the vicious and exhausting cycle of trying to solve it with more effort, sinking deeper into that hole of loneliness and dissatisfaction.
With Flamenco Supervision, I can offer you an objective view of your dance, because many times we get stuck in perfecting the technique to make the steps clear, but we don’t take perspective. Sometimes stepping back and observing from a distance allows us to see the whole picture, and this is what I do in Supervision.
One of the tools we will work on is making your body conscious through exercises from the Conscious Body Technique for Flamenco Dance. Using your own potential to feel and recognize yourself within your body is how transformation will begin to occur. This way of working is healthy for the body and emotions, where you are not criticizing or comparing yourself and above all, you don’t need to wear a mask to cover the insecurity that, over time, hurts a lot and undermines self-esteem, creating emotional pain.
I also look at the structure and assembly of your dance. With so many teachers here in Seville, some students who come for a short time get fascinated and want to take it all in without knowing exactly what they are looking for. They buy steps and structures they try to bring back to their home, their musicians, their country, or a stage. But this purchased and copied dance structure probably doesn’t suit you, because there is something that separates you from that learning, and it is the time you don’t give yourself to grasp it.
While we honor our flamenco teachers who give us everything, we also have to honor our individuality. When, after insisting on a dance, there are parts you don’t like, can’t do, don’t fit well, or don’t identify with, and you always make mistakes in the same sequence, or are afraid to enter that “difficult footwork,” it is because the structure of your dance is failing and your sensations are not there, you haven’t internalized it. So, if you are not putting your body’s sensations into the structure of this dance, you are not communicating with yourself, and it is impossible for you to harmoniously communicate what you want to the musicians who create the sound of your dance, or simply understand the meaning of what you are doing: such as the sound nuances and intensities of the different parts, even if you work with tracks.
That is why another tool I use in Supervision is to make the “Structure” of your dance express you, and when you do this, your dance heals and you transform as well.
There is a process of incorporating the dance structure that needs to be reviewed and given time to process: how you appropriate it, work on it, and make it yours, what moments could contribute more to your art, and which ones are better to discard. Sometimes the structure is not well put together, meaning you have learned it and tried to fit it into yourself without considering yourself. Other times, the structure is not clear and the dance is very tense.
Another fundamental tool is “Expression.” What do you express when you express? You think you are showing your art, but you are showing what you want to hide. In a way, with supervision or coaching, it’s like turning on the light to see into the darkness of your emotions.
The main problem is doing someone else’s dance without having any idea of what your dance is, you only interpret the dance they have taught you or that you have bought in a workshop, and you insist on doing it exactly without considering yourself.
It is very relieving to look objectively, you get the answers you were looking for and they are very clear and forceful.
In Flamenco Supervision, an interpretation of your dance is made. I look at the dance you show also through the management of your own energy, the way you breathe, your body attitude; sometimes you are focused on disguising what you are afraid of instead of enjoying yourself.
When there are people who have the flamenco persona more developed, it is harder to see because they are more trained to hide behind the mask, camouflaging their feelings. This does not mean that they have seen or worked on them, but they do know how to put on the mask of dissimulation, thus showing very staged dances where nothing escapes, not even the emotion. These dances also leave internal feelings of unhappiness. The audience doesn’t know the details of what is happening inside you, but they do perceive a strange feeling or break in the flow of the dance’s energy.
You, on the other hand, find studying more as the solution, but that is not enough, a different perspective is needed, a different path must be taken.
When you understand the story of your dance and accept it with humility, which is related to the story of your life, you accept this blockage without trying hard to forget or mask it. Through this Supervision work, you recover parts of yourself because in what was hidden lies your vital and creative strength.
How is the Coaching Session?
I need to see you through a video you send me, and it has to be from a time when you have recorded yourself dancing, whether in your class or on a stage, in a group if you haven’t done it solo yet, but it has to be clear so I can see your whole body, and it has to be a video because it gives me the possibility to watch from beginning to end how you are carrying your dance, your attitude, and your mistakes that always slip through. Then we can meet in person or online to give you feedback and work on the exercises that suit you best.
I will focus on how you use your technique, the assembly and structure of your dance, and what you express in your dance. There are two stages, first, I will give you feedback and second, you take the information to work on it in your study and in your classes, both the ones you give and the ones you receive. In Flamenco Supervision we review how you are using the technique, to learn to make it conscious, where your dance doesn’t flow, and what you are expressing in it.
How do we work in Supervision?
Once we have taken the first step with the Coaching, you can either use these new tools to chart your path forward or continue with monthly follow-ups. You will notice how each meeting reveals new aspects of yourself that are clearly reflected in your dance. By working with the Conscious Body Technique exercises, your body gains confidence in its movements, and you begin to understand how your most feared emotions: blockages, comparisons, lack of flamenco essence, and not feeling that your dance expresses you, begin to make sense and with this, become lighter each time until you can transform them creatively in the process of investigating your dance.
You can read the shared experiences of people who have worked on their dance like Verónica, Ana, Nurh, Pilar, Pilar, Melina, Marisa, and Rosa, and many more on my blog.
La India
Body Therapist – Flamenco Dancer – Writer
