Before You Dance, Learn to Accompany: Palmas and Respect
Before you dance, learn to accompany others
When I was young, like any boy who wanted to become a flamenco dancer, what I wanted was to dance.
I wanted to learn more, to have more strength, more technique, more personality. I wanted to step out and express myself through dance.
But in the flamenco I grew up with, there was something everyone understood quite naturally:
Before wanting to be out front, you had to learn to be behind.
And being behind meant many things.
It meant knowing how to listen. Knowing how to be present. Knowing when to come in and when to stay quiet. Knowing how to accompany others. And, above all, knowing how to play palmas, rhythmic clapping, well.
Palmas were not an ornament in class. They were not something you learned only if there was time. They were part of our training.
Jaleo, calls of encouragement, perhaps was not studied as a subject, because it also grew largely out of spending time together, listening and living flamenco. But palmas were something we had to learn seriously: with compás, a sense of the rhythmic cycle, with sound, intention and responsibility.
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Why?
Because flamenco is not made by one person alone.
Let's imagine that today I am dancing, with several fellow performers behind me playing palmas. I need those palmas to support me. I need to feel confidence, compás, intention and energy behind me.
But tomorrow, one of those fellow performers will get up to dance. And then I will be the one who has to support them.
What will happen if I have only focused on learning my own dance? What kind of palmas will I give them?
That is where a word I consider fundamental comes in: respect.
Learning palmas is also a way of respecting your fellow performers: the dancers, the singers and the guitarist.
Because palmas that are misplaced, out of compás, too loud or lacking intention do not only harm the person playing them. The problem ends up falling on the artist who is trying to dance, sing or play.
That is why, in flamenco training, learning to accompany others should have as much dignity as learning an escobilla, a footwork sequence, a llamada, a rhythmic call, or a choreography.
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Camarón and an image I always remember
There is a scene in the film Camarón that, for me, represents this idea very well.
When the young Camarón arrives in Madrid full of excitement about singing, he encounters a reality of the professional world: before taking centre stage, he also has to be behind, as part of the ensemble, playing palmas.
And we are talking about Camarón, one of the great artists flamenco has given us.
That image has always seemed important to me. Not because playing palmas is a punishment or a lower rung before being allowed to do something more important. Quite the opposite.
Accompanying others is also flamenco. Being behind is also being an artist. Listening is also learning.
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To my students
That is why, when I insist on palmas, I am not doing it to take time away from dancing. I do it because I am teaching dance.
When I ask you to listen to the singing, to understand where the guitar fits in, to feel the compás, to know how to play palmas and gradually learn to give calls of encouragement, I am not adding things around the choreography.
I am teaching flamenco.
Of course we want to dance better. We have to work on our feet, our arms, our body, our technique, our expression and our choreography.
But there is something I would like us never to forget: a good flamenco dancer should not only care about how they dance when they are out front. They should also care about how they accompany others when it is their turn to be behind.
Because one day you will need others to support you. And another day someone will need you to support them.
That, too, is camaraderie. That, too, is respect. That, too, is flamenco.
Do I know how to accompany someone else well when they dance?
That is where a very important part of learning begins.
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Free palmas classes on YouTube
To keep working on palmas with me, here are two playlists of free classes on my YouTube channel.
AlitaDePollo
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