One of the most difficult thing to achieve in dancing flamenco is to find your own personal style as a dancer. I've been thinking about my style... Do I have one?
As Carmen Ledesma said, a bailaora has her own style when you see her and know exactly that is has to be her and nobody else. She also said that these days most flamenco dancers dance alike.
Manuela Carrasco has a style, Israel Galvan has a style, Carmen Ledesma and La Farruca as well, and they are not the only ones who have their unique styles of dancing; yet, are a minority. Many bailaoras, even the ones that are internationally acclaimed, copy the styles of others. I look back at all the shows I have seen and agree with Carmen that most of the dancers I have seen were copies of one another. They were doing remates in the exact same places, everything was very predictable and similar. We are taught that here you need to do remate and here you cannot but what I'm seeing is that you have to find originality within a patter rather than sticking to it hopelessly.
Moreover, many dancers think that flamenco is about theatrical gestures, tragic mimics and impersonating gypsies. This has the most horrible outcome in my opinion, especially if a bailaora carries a dramatic face throughout an alegria. Yes, there is some theater in flamenco but it's more according to Stanislavsky's method where a performer, in order to express the required emotion, has to feel it first by going back to their happy or sad memories. Otherwise the acting is false. Same applies to flamenco which is about expressing your own emotions; it is a very personal dance. So my first conclusion is that adding your personal emotions makes the dance more unique and defines a style.
Yet, it's not only about expressing through the face. The style applies also to the manner of movement. I'm starting to see it more and more as I study with different artists. Last year, Carmen kept repeating the following to me: "Agachate! No puedes estar tan recta bailando!" (Lean forward! You cannot be so erect while dancing) I was listening and applying to her suggestions. This year I have a class with Nazaret Reyes and all I hear is: "No te agachas! Tienes que bailar mas recta!" (Don't lean forward! You have to dance more erect!) I was confused at first, but then I realized it is a matter of personal style and they just dance differently. Choni, for example, never tells me to bend down or be more straight but tells me to play more with the upper body and I see her "vueltas quebradas" as more of a game of shoulders than a turn with "cambre." I think a personal style of body movement is even harder to achieve than expressing emotions and I am definitely not there yet, and I have no idea how long it takes to develop a style. Moreover and sadly, I do not even think that everybody is capable of developing their own style because otherwise there would be more unique bailaoras out there. The first step in finding my style is to learn different styles and see what is most natural for my body and what feels best and then go from there and experiment.
