I just got back from watching Paco Pena's flamenco show A Compas.
It's hard really to put in words an experience that flooded over me and still is. I'll still try to explain what I saw. I'm reminded of the words of Aquinas: "After what I saw, what else can be said?"
Paco Pena is the show director and main flamenco guitarist. His mastery of the instrument is at a level of creation, not genius or innovation. He played the guitar, his fingers gliding off the strings and his head somewhere close by.
But for me, it was the two male dancers. One was very rigid in his stance and posture, but his technique was breathtaking to watch. At times when I thought he is about to lose control, he is in fact in total control. Tall, sculpted physique. He looked like a Hugo Boss model but he wasn't. He looked like the waiter the girls hit on at a Spanish restaurant, but he wasn't. He was this fully beautiful man dancing with the strength of a mauling lion and the grace of a waking swan.
The other dancer was more playful and sensuous. His technique was also off the hook, his mastery of his feet, the level of detail in the arm and hand movements, the gentle sweeps of his feet done with the force of a iron hammer: I don't know how to summarize the rush of thoughts in my head as I write this!
Both dancers told the story of the singers. And the singers told the story of the guitarists. And the percussionist, a talent all on his town, wove all these stories together with his dexterous, deft drumming against a plain, yet awesome sounding box.
I loved the first dancer I mentioned. He embodied to me real masculinity, a real man was in front of me. Everything about him was perfect.
Watching the show gripped me, held me, and threw me into another world. A world not constrained and jailed by middle-class values of keeping it safe, saving for a house, and living life small. This world is art. Living for it, living it, being art.
It's been ages since I blogged and told you all where I am right now, but as I watched the show, I resolved I won't live a middle-class life anymore. I want to live like I saw people danced on stage.
At the very end, or towards the end, or maybe it was during the curtain call, one thing burst through my head:
Qudus Allah! That's 'Holy God' in Arabic. It's a line from a liturgical prayer. Because no one else but the creative God could have created man like this. This show proved that when man lived unconstrained, he could fully express the essence of God. It was a visceral moment.
I'm going to watch the show again on Sunday. I've never done this before in my life.
As much as a spectactor, I also watched this show as one who started learning flamenco back when I lived in Oxford. I was rapt with that dancer's technique, body, facial expression, bodily movement, the purity of his footwork. Oh! I want to be like that! I will be like that! I am rapt.
Just from this show, I'm going to write that book about male sexuality, the one that's been hiding in me all these years. And I'm going to take Efmevi to that next level. This show truly, deeply, thoroughly inspired me tonight.
(I will post soon about everything that has transpired since my last post, especially Efmevi. Pray for this project and check out the website: http://www.efmevi.net.)
