NOT FLAMENCO
minimum program length: 6 hours
Il corpo: ecco una terra non ancora colonizzata dal potere.
— Pier Paolo Pasolini
— Pier Paolo Pasolini
Yalda Younes consistently falls in love with flamenco. She loves not only the way flamenco builds, retains, and distributes energy as also its humbling and uplifting ways of inhabiting and affecting our worlds.
Simultaneously organized and rebellious, flamenco has at its core the qualities of wildness that sustain the living and defeat authoritarianism. Its philosophical fundamentals, or what Yalda calls "Flamenco Forces," deeply influence her pedagogical practice, even as her creative forms may vary, stemming from a deeply personal and experimentally driven realm.
For lack of a better term, she refers to her practice as "Not Flamenco." This is her way of acknowledging that her approach to practicing and teaching flamenco is non-traditional, as the tradition is not her own. Simultaneously, it honors her training background in Seville and the influence her flamenco teachers had on her. She believes that her relationship with her teachers not only taught her rhythms, dynamics, and dance but also ignited new ways of sensing and thinking, significantly contributing to the artist she is today.
Yalda Younes’ work is a testament of the rich creative potential that can arise when artists respectfully experiment with culturally situated traditions, all while exploring their own history and individuality.
Experimenting with Flamenco Forces - a personal decalogue
Simultaneously organized and rebellious, flamenco has at its core the qualities of wildness that sustain the living and defeat authoritarianism. Its philosophical fundamentals, or what Yalda calls "Flamenco Forces," deeply influence her pedagogical practice, even as her creative forms may vary, stemming from a deeply personal and experimentally driven realm.
For lack of a better term, she refers to her practice as "Not Flamenco." This is her way of acknowledging that her approach to practicing and teaching flamenco is non-traditional, as the tradition is not her own. Simultaneously, it honors her training background in Seville and the influence her flamenco teachers had on her. She believes that her relationship with her teachers not only taught her rhythms, dynamics, and dance but also ignited new ways of sensing and thinking, significantly contributing to the artist she is today.
Yalda Younes’ work is a testament of the rich creative potential that can arise when artists respectfully experiment with culturally situated traditions, all while exploring their own history and individuality.
Experimenting with Flamenco Forces - a personal decalogue
- Seek unpredictability, not virtuosity.
- Make noise, and peak into silence.
- Spit, ignite, incite, fuel, and tease fire.
- Honor the smallest pleasures with big celebrations.
- Rebel against fate and surrender to fate.
- Allow your weeping to hold, lift, and transform solitudes.
- Find power in self-derision, integrity in simplicity, emancipation in collectivity.
- Seek a support system that allows you to thrive, and trust that others got your back when you fuck up.
- Age, form, gender, and ability do not matter; individuality, ingenuity, and playfulness do.
- Recognize every external presence as a potential artist.