You Know the Choreography. So Why Does It Disappear When the Music Starts?

There is a very particular kind of flamenco betrayal.

You've practised your choreography.

Slowly. Without the music.

You know what comes next. Your feet are behaving themselves. Your arms have also received the memo.

You might even be feeling rather pleased with yourself.

Then someone puts the music on. And apparently you have never seen this choreography before in your life. 😂

Suddenly you're half a second behind.

You're thinking about the next step while doing the current one. You're trying to listen to the music at the same time. And somewhere in the front row, Rebecca is dancing beautifully and becoming an increasingly important part of your emergency choreography backup plan.

So what happened?

Your brain just got a lot busier

When you practise choreography without the music, your brain can concentrate largely on one thing – What comes next?

Add the music and that changes.

Now you're remembering the choreography and trying to stay in compás...

→ You may be listening to the singer.

→ You're hearing accents.

→ You're trying to remember where a particular phrase begins or ends.

→ You're trying to coordinate your feet and arms.

And ideally, you'd also like to look as though you're dancing flamenco rather than completing a complex physical challenge just slightly outside of your current abilities.

So when the choreography falls apart, it's very easy to decide, "I obviously don't know it well enough."

And the solution seems equally obvious – practise the choreography again.

That may help.

But it may not solve the actual problem.

Choreography isn't just a sequence of steps

If you've learned the choreography mainly as:

First I do this.

Then this.

Then this... you're asking your brain to remember a long chain of information.

Miss one link and suddenly you're wondering what comes next.

But flamenco choreography isn't a collection of movements with some flamenco music playing conveniently in the background.

The choreography belongs to the music. A movement lands where it does for a reason. An accent relates to something you can hear. A phrase occupies a particular place in the compás.

A change in the choreography may connect to something happening in the cante. Those aren't extra bits of flamenco information to pile on top of your choreography.

They're part of the choreography. And that distinction matters.

Give your choreography something to belong to

Imagine learning a piece and knowing only:

Step, step, turn, arm, footwork, llamada...

Now compare that with recognising:

I'm here in the compás.

This phrase is happening now.

I can hear what this accent is responding to.

This is why the choreography changes here.

Now the movements aren't seventeen unrelated pieces of information you have to hold in your head. There are relationships between them.

You can hear clues. You can recognise familiar patterns. You can understand why something happens where it does.

That doesn't mean you'll never forget your choreography again. You will. Rebecca probably will too, although she'll hide it better. 🙄😅