Flamenco Sin Fronteras - Dresses with wild borders

It’s all about dance in Singapore at the moment. One of the events that most attracted me is organized by the local Flamenco organization Flamenco sin Fronteras. I like Flamenco for one because of its powerful music. I mostly became familiar with the genre after I bought that beautiful album Almoraima by Paco de Lucia back in the seventies.  I played it until the originally black vinyl became a light color gray. I cannot exactly remember when I got first exposed to the dancing though, live dancing that is.

Some of it may have gone back to a time in Madrid where I saw a group of young students on the square spontaneously burst into clapping and what could have been flamenco style dancing. We also regularly visited this dive on Bedford and Leroy, I think it was, back in New York. The owners were fervent Flamenco dancers and regularly gave performances in their tiny bar. I vaguely remember he was Spanish and she I believe was Asian. Something I found peculiar back then but now I know the performers of Fronteras no longer

Like music I have no knowledge what so ever of Flamenco dancing, that would allow me to comment on what is good or not. What I have been caught on commenting on is the experience, energy emotion. 

One thing that strikes me when I think about it is that flamenco does not appear to be the kind of dance where the man leads the woman. 

To me it often looks like they are more challenging each other, with the woman often times in, what appears to be, a much more dominant role. 

Of course it is tough competition when your outfit is merely a pair of tight pants and a shirt and the women are decked out with colorful dressing full of frills and thrills that gracefully wrap around their bodies when they turn into the rhythm. 

Oddly enough maybe I see that dominating role of the female dancer come even more to view when you compare female and male soloist. At least that was the case last night. 

In what was for me the absolute highlight of the evening we watched a self-choreographed performance, that was in my opinion amazing and reached every corner of emotional intensity that flamenco has to offer

We saw the dancer turn from serene calm 

into raging wild fire 

sometimes stunningly beautiful in expression 

sometimes fierce

then calm and controlled 

then morfing into furious and turbulent

, supported by the rhythms of the band as well the tapping of her own feet.  

Often she looked simply swept away by her own wiled passion for the art form. 

That piece of the show alone made the whole experience worth it’s while and very tempting to follow some of the other shows by Flamenco Sin Fronteras this week.