Agustito

When asked to describe flamenco, I am usually at a loss for words. After 25 years living with a passion for this art, I still feel about flamenco the way Sufi poet Rumi felt about love:

“Although I may try to describe love, when I experience it, I am speechless.”

Within flamenco there are as many different interpretations of life as there are ways of loving in the world. We can sing and dance passionately, with great suffering, or quietly, with longing and nostalgia. We can play the guitar slowly, savoring every note, or thump it mercilessly in a rhythmic explosion. We can hear the beat of the hands and feet as an unrelenting, headlong sprint in pursuit of….what? Life? Death? Or get lost in the exquisite silences between notes that seem to expand to encompass a whole landscape: the place where, as the poet Rumi says, “lover, loving, and beloved are one.”

“Love Letters from a Flamenco Heart” is not only a love letter to flamenco, but also an exploration of the different ways of loving.

Olivia Chacon