In today’s episode, I want you to meet my friend and Flamenco dancer Ana Lucia Jardim. I want to share with you a tiny moment when she and her trio shared the beautiful art of Flamenco with a room full of work colleagues in San Francisco. I knew this was a moment to savor, so I pulled out my phone, recorded the audio of their music, singing, dancing, and a year later, reflected together, and here’s what she shared.
Ending Credits:
Special thanks and acknowledgement to singer, Roberto Zamora and David McLean Flamenco Guitarist and Composer, Todd Anderson our producer and Ana Lucia Jardim our wise guide. I’m signing-off here for this year to resume again in early 2021. To all a Merry Christmas and Happy Holiday. You can do this.
Keep going-
Aaron
Ana Lucia:
My parents recently as I was chatting with them, that they told me that, you know, sometimes they would go to record stores and they would take me as a toddler with them. And I would just like break out, dancing in the middle of the store with, you know, my diaper butt. So it was just, I think it's just part of my nature.
Ana Lucia:
A couple of things. One is dance is really like a training lab for life. For me, I learned a lot about being a human, being, a leader, a coach of leaders through what I get to experiment and develop as a dancer. So things like how to improvise when stuff hits the fan, how to, how to lead a group of people, you know, and how to make them want to follow you of all people, how to fade into the background because you want to support your fellow, the dancers right. And it's not your place to lead.
Ana Lucia:
Persevere through challenges. You know, I have a broken foot right now. And so what do you do when you can't dance? I have an extremely active mind. I have a lot of stuck energy in my skull. It literally feels like a thunderstorm in there sometimes. And when I'm dancing all that energy kind of like distributes, you know, through my body, my soul. And I have quiet inside. Not that I'm like bored or anything, I'm just super alive
Ana Lucia:
There's a harmony and there's an access to peace that is pretty much addictive. I have to say. It's definitely been a place where I've developed a lot of muscle memory for real life. We're really living the best life I can.
Ana Lucia:
I dance also because I get to say things that I can not say with language and ironically, I've learned five different languages. So I have a way with words and I can express myself in different languages, but there's something about the body that is so immediate that there's no filter, right? There's no conceptual intellectual dominance there. And I believe that allows me to access parts of me that maybe unconscious and also parts of me that are more connected to the energy. If you want to use it more like ethereal word.
Ana Lucia:
Complete alignment and everything is the music. My fellow dancers, the audience there's moments when all of that comes together and it does feel like Whoa, you know, we're synced up to the moon, the stars. And you know, one thing that flamenco is about is when you get to that place of Duaneday, you're not like the absolute union and selfless flow. You kind of disappear into everything.
Ana Lucia:
I believe there's total Liberation, if you're brave, right? Because you can also be holding back on stage. I mean, it's very easy. Like you make mistakes all the time. I fallen on stage in front of very important people that sucked what happened afterwards. Like people came to me, people I had never talked to before I had never met and they came to me and they were just so in a way, inspired by my mistake, by my humanity that I moved something inside of them. You know, when, once you fall on stage and you get up and you still do it and you leave, I think you paint a picture of redemption for everybody.
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