Leisurely Seeking Duende: Meaning making through the embodied experience of flamenco dance

Abstract

Flamenco dance is a popular, internationally recognised and practised art form, with strong ties to its cultural origin in Andalucía, Spain. Flamenco dancers move to and with the music but also make music, contributing to the rhythmic soundscape with their footwork and body percussion. This is a challenging, diverse, and intricate dance form, that, whether performed socially at a party or professionally on stage, requires extensive training. This thesis explores what it is about flamenco dance that draws participants from all over the world to practise it as a serious leisure activity. Focusing on the Australian flamenco scene, where there is a substantial community of mostly women dedicated to learning and progressing in their flamenco dance journeys, this ethnographic and phenomenologically inflected research, reveals how flamenco dance, for these women, is a practice of meaning making and a way in which they enhance their lives. Through committed engagement, which the technique and culture of flamenco demands, participants I danced with and interviewed developed new ways of moving, listening, and expression that allowed them to have, even if fleeting and infrequent, emotionally embodied musical dance experiences where, for them, they transcend their usual state of being and their everyday identities. This heightened state is commonly referred to in flamenco as duende – an elusive concept that can vary in meaning, but represents the rare and satisfying feelings that dancers, whether they know it or not, seek out in their dedicated engagement with flamenco.