Queerując (we) flamenco

Abstract

“A man is supposed to dance manly”, announces the first point of the flamenco ‘decalogue proclaimed in 1951 by one of the most important avant-garde flamenco dancers of the 20th century, Vincente Escudero. These words illustrate the relationship between flamenco and the traditional division of gender roles. Despite being considered the fruit of transcultural hybridisation, flamenco is characterised by a strong conservatism. In this context, flamenco dance is a field of struggle for kinetic identity in which two flamenco visions clash. The first is the traditional one, in which one of the determinants is the division into male and female dance, and the second is the queered one, in which the categories in question are blurred and transformed, ultimately leading to the inclusion of queered flamenco in the space of popular culture. The purpose of this text is to present the problem of redefining gender in contemporary flamenco dance and how its queering practices affect the aforementioned categories, opening up flamenco to the space of popular culture. The author focuses on the choreographer and dancer Manuel Liñan, as well as the pop culture project Queer Flamenco by Ruben Heras and Jero Férec. These artists continue to discuss the binary divisions within flamenco at the level of both gender and sexuality. In doing so, they perform acts of transgression by entering into a dialogue with the aesthetic and kinetic canons of masculinity and femininity that are strongly rooted in flamenco. Queer becomes for them not only a form of constructing their own kinetic identity, but also a sphere for creating inclusive spaces. At the same time, artists such as Heras and Férec incorporate flamenco into the context of popular culture.