Beyond Words...

In life, we all encounter things that, for a brief moment, catch our breath because they transcend what we thought were the limits of human capacity. Well I had exactly one of these moments on Friday night when I went to a flamenco performance at the Jardin Borda in the center of Cuernavaca. Supported by two classical guitars, a violin, two body percussionists and an amazing vocalist, I watched four flamenco dancers take the stage and present one of the most impassioned performances I’ve ever seen. The whole entire show was so rhythmically infused with pulsating vocals, rhythmic hand clapping (palmas) and feet stomping (zapateado) and of course, dancing.
I was sitting in a beautiful garden in a stadium that was across a small pond from the stage. The water glimmered and the stars were gleaming in the sky (which is a small, but important side note because it’s important to say that I have yet to experience light pollution here. In contrast to the orange night sky of Minneapolis, the stars here beam every night). Suddenly, the opening note of the vocalist pierced through the crowd. And to touch on this, with the vocalists in this type of performance, the goal is not to have control of their vocals, it’s in fact the opposite--the art of letting go. The lead vocalists threw his head back, opened his arms and let the sound pour out directly from his soul. As the guitarists began to pluck their guitars in the most alluring way, a beautiful woman stepped on stage with a Medusa-like stare that could stop any living thing in its tracks.
With hands twisting seamlessly, she began to set the story that she was going to tell. As she slowly began to lock into a rhythm with her feet, the percussionists joined in. I noticed that my hands were already clenched to the end of my chair because I knew this was just the beginning. And as much as I would like to describe what came next, the truth is, I really can’t because it left me speechless. The passion and power exuding from that stage was something I had never seen before and I was almost brought to tears. To me, it was the living example of what dance is to me in its truest form: a story that is so beautiful, so powerful, so beyond words, that it can only be told through movement.