Jaleos Overlapping

This part of my experimentation with Jaleos I dedicate to my current Flamenco teacher and friend Sabrina Avilés, who always encouraged me to work with my strengths and my weaknesses when exploring a difficult technique. Like most of the teachers that have shaped my understanding of art and dance, Sabrina helped me focus on my errors and allowed me the time to try and figure out on my own the problems in my understanding of the concepts or the techniques. Sabrina encouraged intense repetition to build up speed, rigor and confidence with footwork and strongly corrected me when I was unable to figure out the steps on my own. Many times correction happened when I was unaware that I was unconsciously approaching the step in a way that seemed to "sound very similar" but was not the exact way in which it was designed. Sabrina would stop me and point out what I had "invented" by trying to solve the footwork problem. She would then invite me to to decipher the footwork patterns that had led to this jaleo.

"I correct you because I care", she said to me once when I was struggling with a complex footwork piece.

In flamenco, like in painting or printing, errors may lead to a deeper understanding of the concept and also to a new way of responding to the objective.

Some of the pieces that you will see in this section are errors that have been transformed into something else; other pieces are inspired by errors.

I superimposed several forms on the same paper looking for compositions that would explore symmetry, rotation and superposition on the plane.