Flamenco is something that, in my mind, has always been associated with my mother. For some context; my mother was a professional flamenco dancer, we lived in Sevilla for 6 months when I was 3 years old, and she continues to teach and perform. Her love for the art form is impressive and undying. While forming my own artistic identity, I sought to be separate from both my parents, seeking a unique and independent selfhood that I could claim as my own. I gravitated toward more ethereal dance forms such as ballet and modern, dances of the air and sky. I went to Berlin where I studied contemporary dance, dove into the experimental arts, and began my ongoing dance project, Symbolic Movement Choir.

Growing up, flamenco surrounded me. I would be dragged along to all of the shows, classes, and festivals my mother went to, and from age 4 up until the end of high school I took classes with her. In the fall of 2022 I returned to New York, resettling in my childhood home in the East Village, and reassessing things. As I returned to a very familiar physical space, I found myself returning to my first dance form; flamenco. Something in the music is what initially captivated me, a twinge in the heart, a nostalgic echo, a feeling. A lot had changed in New York, but it seemed the flamenco scene was still thriving, and there was a support system of people there for me who had known me since I was a child. I decided to go to a class taught by Soledad Barrio at the church on West 86th street and the next month, I started working with Noche Flamenca as a scenic dancer in their show Searching For Goya. I was thrown into a world that was very familiar but also extremely new and exciting to me. I got to work alongside incredible talent, and felt inspired to continue down this path. The 12 count slipped comfortably back into my palms as I listened to the archive of flamenco CDs that my mom had accumulated throughout her years. I began reading her books that told of an infinitely complex web of flamenco history, folklore, and theory. Rediscovering songs that my mom used to sing to me felt like a memory calling me from the past, time spiraling in circles, returning to familiar melodies. I
began to understand my body differently, my relationship to gravity, the physics of movement in one genre as opposed to another. In flamenco, your legs and feet have weight, while your upper body and torso is lifted, arms and hands are highly stylized and the movement is intrinsically enmeshed with the music. It is a dance of the earth; rootedness allows for the bloom of the floreo in the expression of the hands. My past training had taught me petit allegros, pointing of the foot, contractions, all of which helped me immensely but seemed to simultaneously and fundamentally contradict flamenco. It felt exciting to rediscovering each palo, and the feeling associated with each one, mirrored in different archetypes of human nature. Each dance falling somewhere on the spectrum of comedy and tragedy, expressing human universalities, rites of birth, coming of age, and death.

In Spring of 2024 I decided to apply for Flamenco Vivo’s Certamen, a yearly national flamenco dance competition. My mother had finally finished teaching me an Alegrias de Cadiz, a palo characterized by jubilation, coquettishness, and the ease of the warm sun and the salty ocean. This choreography was “frankensteined” together, with steps by Antonio Canales, Rafael Campallo, my mother Maya de Silva, Fanny Ara, La Meira, and Aurora Reyes…an amalgamation of teachers and personalities, passed down to me and reinterpreted through my own body and artistry.

The Certamen forced me to be vulnerable and evaluate myself. My body had been trained in one specific direction for so long, I had to rewire and reattach my energy to the earth. I had to work on creating precise sounds within the rhythm with proper and graceful use of the upper body. In the genre of flamenco I am the dancer, but also a percussionist. I had to convey a complex emotional arch between the entrance, letra, silencio, and final build up within the 5 minute time limit. The Certamen gave me time to study with my advisors and musicians, opportunities to ask questions, and space to study on my own.

The time on stage was a blur. While performing, I usually enter into a state more similar to trance than regular consciousness. I remember Jose Moreno’s voice reverberating through my fingertips, Fanny and Rebecca’s palmas keeping time, and Ricardito’s guitar guiding us. In the end, I won a scholarship to study in Sevilla for a week. My flamenco journey continues; I am continuing to work and tour with Noche Flamenca, and look forward to receiving new choreographies from my mother. I’m still not sure where I fit in in this world, maybe my future lies somewhere straddling the two worlds of flamenco and modern dance, floating between sky and earth, creating my own path and my own unique dance.