Dance studies
Carolane Sanchez, Senior Lecturer, Performing Arts, Univ. Bourgogne Franche-Comté, France

Carolane Sanchez received her PhD in Performing Arts in 2019. She is the author of a research-creation thesis entitled “What makes flamenco: palimpsest of research creation with Juan Carlos Lérida.” She integrates her activity as a teacher and artist-creator into her university research.

After beginning my flamenco dance practice in Lyon, I left to live in Spain, first in Seville then in Madrid, to train alongside specialized teachers.

What drew me towards flamenco practice was at the time what would become one of the conflictual reasons I would blossom in its form, namely this tacit injunction to become a disciple ofcompás. To briefly explain this notion, we must understand that each flamenco palo, the musical-choreographic style characterized by harmonic and melodic specificities, is developed on the basis of a compás, a rhythmic pattern, with determined accents. Within instrumentalists’ communal comprehension, the compás, which repeats continuously, is determined by entrance and exit codes, incorporated into the compás itself. This codification structures the dialogue games between performers and creaters question/answer effects between participants – the instrumentalists, palmeros, dancers.

One of the problematics that arises when learning flamenco is that when we perform using our own language and, therefore, our familiar codes, we might have the tendency to focus on a respect for the compás, so much so that we may be apprehensive to pull away from it. In effect, we often hear and say in class that we cannot, above all, “estar fuera de compás” in flamenco. “Being out of compás” (English translation) creates a rupture in the flow of the collective machinery. Indeed, the group – through the palmas, the instruments, the jaleos– welcomes and encourages the performer’s energetic discharge, provided that this explosion is organized in time and rhythm. In this way, during my flamenco training, I often thought of compás as a sacrosanct framework, of which Father Flamenco would assure the powerful guidance. This apprehension to lose the compás during flamenco performance manifests itself elsewhere, often in the bodies of flamenco apprentices, who often have the tendency to dive into the juerga with a tense, rigid body. However, it seems to me that a challenge specifically related to flamenco technique is this aim to comprehend the compás with a consciousness directed more towards the feeling of pulsation which leads the body into a state of exploration with the rhythm, whether or not it is audible, visible, or otherwise, but, above all, from an internal anchoring. I was able to question this more specifically through practice during a 2016 workshop led by Juan Carlos Lérida in 2016.

In fact, one of the driving issues of learning flamenco, in my opinion and concerning my research and practice, consists in thinking of about how to explore an inner approach to rhythm, so that, from this state, we can play with the framework of compás – and therefore also advance other forms of play in our relationships with others – to invest the “flesh” of the rhythmic skeleton. In this way, if we are more attentive to pulsation, we can be better attuned to the self, to what happens around us, and react more perceptibly to other sensorial information that we come into contact with. This makes me think of the sense of time falling away, depending upon the palos interpreted, of handing oneself over to motor responses in order to accompany the auditory information emitted by song, the vibratory sensation of the taconeo, etc. Immersing myself in this exploratory pathway, it then became clearer to me that my conflict with formal stereotypes – sometimes intrinsic to the expressivity of the flamenco genre – is due to codes inherent to the functioning of the very structure of the compás. I am thinking, for example, of the cierres’ closing attitude on the 10th beat for the 12-beat compás. These formal stereotypes could be taken up on the basis of a more internal approach, and less so in demonstration of a combative form, since the rhythmic-body emerges from another listening site, what Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen would refer to as “cellular listening.” Being more attentive to the pulse, in its dialogue with silence, in resonance with the sensory information we receive, invites us to explore a relationship to rhythm, which seems conducive to an even more somatic exploration with the compás, and the resulting body play is of considerable interest to me.

More from this author:

Corps flamenco, independent documentary film, Julien Artru (dir., prod.), Carolane Sanchez (co-author), with Juan Carlos Lérida, 52 min., 2017.

Juan Carlos Lérida and Carolane Sanchez, « Regards croisés sur l’après-thèse : bilans et perspectives d’une collaboration en recherche-création » / « Miradas cruzadas sobre la post-tesis : evaluaciones y perspectivas de una colaboración en investigación-creación » (fr./esp.) in carnet de l'Atelier des doctorants en danse, Centre national de la danse, ISSN 2678-8292, 2020,  https://docdanse.hypotheses.org/1181.

www.carolane-sanchez.com

Cite this item: Carolane Sanchez, “Rythme”, translated by Lauren Fabrizio, Performascope: Interdisciplinary Lexicon of Performance and Research-Creation, Grenoble: Université Grenoble Alpes, 2021, [online]: http://performascope.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/en/detail/177575