When the teacher learns too
A sevillanas class, a cane, a skirt and a reflection on everything my students teach me while I try to teach them to dance.
Today I ended my working day with a lovely feeling.
I had been teaching sevillanas, and on my way home I was thinking about everything we had worked on. Not just the steps or the choreography, but those little things that, over the years, I have come to understand can make an enormous difference to the way we dance.
Today, for example, we worked on how to use the body.
To explain it, I used something as simple as a cane. Sometimes a verbal explanation is not enough. You can say many times how the body should be positioned, where a movement should go or where an intention begins, but until the student feels it physically, it remains just an idea.
And that is one of the things I find most exciting about teaching: looking for a way to make visible what normally cannot be seen.
We also worked on something that seems much simpler: how to hold the skirt in sevillanas.
It may seem like a small detail. But an important part of flamenco lies precisely there.
Over the years, you come to understand that dancing better does not necessarily mean learning increasingly complicated things. Often it means returning to something basic and discovering that there was far more within it than we thought.
How you hold a skirt. How you position a hand. How you use your body. How you make a movement look like more than just a movement. These are small things. But they matter.
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A SHARED REHEARSAL
While I was talking after class, a phrase came up that stayed with me: “A class is also a shared rehearsal.”
I like to think of teaching that way. Because when I teach, I am not just passing on what I know. I am observing.
A student tries to make a movement, and I see where the difficulty appears. Then I look for another word. Another example. Another sensation. Another way to explain it.
And sometimes, while trying to find that explanation, I come to understand something myself that I already knew how to do, but had never needed to explain in that way.
That is wonderful. I have been dancing and teaching flamenco for many years, but I am still discovering things within movements I have made thousands of times.
My students think they come to learn from me. And of course they do come to learn. But perhaps they do not know that I learn from them too. A great deal.
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WHAT A STUDENT TEACHES HER TEACHER
I always say it, although some of them may not quite believe it. Someone who has never taught might imagine the relationship between teacher and student as something that only works in one direction: the teacher knows and the student learns.
But that is not how it works for me. Every body makes me think. Every difficulty makes me investigate. Every question makes me organise something I may have done intuitively for years.
And every time I find a new way to help a student understand something, I have moved forward as a teacher too. But not just as a teacher. As a flamenco dancer too. And often, as a person.
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FLAMENCO BEYOND THE ACADEMY
There is something even deeper that I have come to understand over the years. Many of the things we use to learn flamenco also help us learn how to live.
Listen before acting. Find balance. Use no more force than necessary. Accept that something does not work today and try again tomorrow. Understand that moving forward does not always mean running. Know when to hold and when to let go. Sense the person in front of you. Find your place without losing your connection with others.
All of that exists within dance. But it exists outside it too.
Perhaps that is why I still feel so curious about teaching after so many years. Because a class is never exactly the same. The students change. Bodies change. I change. And the way we understand flamenco keeps changing too.
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WHAT REMAINS AFTER A CLASS
Besides, today all that work was recorded in our YouTube classes for channel members. That makes me especially happy.
Because an explanation that began in a class in Japan can be preserved and later reach someone else. Perhaps someone is trying to understand how to use their body better. Perhaps another person has been holding the skirt in a particular way for some time and suddenly finds a small detail that helps them.
That is what I want to preserve. Not just choreographies. Not just steps. I want to leave behind those little keys I have learned throughout my life in flamenco. Because some of them seem insignificant. Until one day you understand one of them. And your dancing changes.
Today I went home thinking about exactly that. I had finished teaching. But once again, I had also ended the day having learned something.
And perhaps that is one of the reasons I still want to be a teacher. Because every time I try to teach someone to dance, flamenco teaches me something again.
AlitaDePollo
Related links: BG Flamenco YouTube · Channel membership
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