An Excerpt From

Song of the Outcasts: An Introduction to Flamenco

By Robin Totton

Abstract. If flamenco is abstract, what does it express? "The mood of the song" is a short answer, but not an adequate one. Most (but not all) of the best dancers dance to the words of the song, so such basic emotions as happy and unhappy, grief, anguish, anger, and so forth may be involved. But if the dancer has good technical command, the dance in large measure expresses both more and less than that. It expresses the personality of the dancer, or at least a personal reaction to the words. And there is a pervasive element of arrogant self-assertion that seems almost necessary if the personality of the dancer is to come across. Above all else, the dancer must feel confident. Antonio El Pipa, when I first saw him, was already successful (he won the Corboda dance competition), but his reputation had yet to hit the heights. Of him, and older flamenco said to me: "Antonio is good, and I think he will be very good when he starts to believe in his talent as much as we do." At the time, his dance expressed above all what an amiable man he was. Two years later the transformation happened. His dancing had all the arrogant-looking command in the world. I put this beside what a German dance student told me: that she knew that, to look good (and therefore to be any good) she had to appear marvelous (and therefore try to feel so). But it was hard to do so when she knew she wasn't. It was clear that, in saying this, she was thinking of her lack of technique, rather than of her person or her artistic potential. Confident command of technique would enable her to project mood and personality, which would make her technique look better - a vicious circle that I imagine is familiar to every apprentice performance artist, whatever the art, and one that only hard, persistent work would enable her to break. Though it is also true that a certain prickly pride is notable in the Gypsies - it is indeed part of our stereotypical image of spaniards. The dancer needs to project this, which may be one reason so few outsiders ever become really good at flamenco. I used to feel that the dancer needed a measure of arrogant self-confidence. But two anecdotes suggest this is mistaken. One concerns the great Manuela Carrasco. Eve Yerbabuena, a star as yet only thirty years old, was taken when she was eleven to see her dance. "We were with her in the dressing room, and she was very shy, like me. When I saw her on stage, in make-up and dancing, she was like a child dressed up for a carnival, with another personality that enabled her to communicate with us. That hooked me." There is a dancer called Carmen Herrera whose quality and promise so convince me she is due for fame that I have taken many photos of her. On returning to England, I showed the pictures to friends and asked them, "How old is she?" The answers ranged from twenty-five upward. In fact, she was barely fourteen. Offstage she is a shy, polite child. Perhaps this quality has less to do with any arrogance than with the fact that performers love to perform. Andalusians seem all to love having their photo taken; when I see a good face, even on an unknown passer-by, I know I'm welcome to photograph them.