Flamenco Dancing…The Language of the soul

To dance is to be out of yourself. To be larger, more beautiful, and more powerful. One genre in which that is clearly embodied is in flamenco dancing.
Flamenco dancing is a very rich art. It has a lot of touches from all over the world.
Flamenco dancing goes  back to gypsies who came from India. They crossed the world till they arrived in Andalusia. They  learnt a lot of music, a lot of traditions, a lot of rhythms and added them to their folklore.
Gypsies used to dance in caves and mountains because they were not allowed to approach the cities. Then they started dancing in bars and restaurants in front of soldiers during the civil war in Spain. People started to notice that flamenco is a beautiful art and that they can include it in their life and tradition and progressively it became the traditional art in Andalusia before it became academic.
Luckily, a flamenco performance was held on Saturday in Mustafa Ali Gallery by the best Syrian flamenco dancer, Adrian Wathec Salman, with Majd Mallak on guitar, Bashar Nizam on cante, Nasrin Hamdan on violin, and Rawad Jalloul on cajón.
When asked about his beginning in flamenco, Adrian said: “My flamenco experience started in Damascus in 2000 with my neighbour, Pakita, who taught me how to dance and understand this music, then I started training my two sisters. We struggled too much with our parents who were not happy at all with us bringing this art at home. We struggled for 5 years before we met the flamenco dancer Ana González, who came to Damascus by chance as a tourist and she taught us many steps. Then, in 2007 we met Lori Baghdasarian, a great dancer, from whom we learnt the secrets of this beautiful art.”
Since then, they have performed about 220 performances around Syria and in Lebanon.
He added: “I don’t really know how to describe why I am dancing flamenco. I have not chosen flamenco, rather the flamenco has chosen me. It is a talent, if I can call It; it is a gift from the sky that I could understand this music so far from its home.”
Adrian pointed out that this art is very personal as every dancer performs it in his/her way and style.
“Flamenco is the art of my life, it has been 22 years since I started till today. I am not able to stop, and I will not.”
To conclude, and as Merce Cunningham said, dancing gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on walls and museums, no poems to be printed or sold, nothing but the fleeting moment when you feel alive.
Najla Khoury