I'm not very knowledgeable about types of dance nor the histories of ballet, waltz, and cha-chas. That said, I've been thinking about flamenco lately. Some weeks back, I noticed a skirt in a clothing store that was long and black with layers of taffeta ruffles along an angled hemline. The skirt looked like something performers on television might wear when dancing a flamenco. The word and dance flamenco perched in my mind a while. Flamenco might be the Spanish term for flamingo, the tall pink wading bird. Flamingos at one time were, for some reason unknown to me, popular here in Austin, Texas. There was a restaurant that sold black t-shirts with a row of pink flamingos. There was a bit of a tug-of-war, not a battle, about whether it was okay to have statues of pink flamingos in one's yard. Did pink flamingos make the neighborhood tacky or cool? That said, the only real flamingos I remember may have lived at the zoo in San Antonio.

Anyhow. I've been thinking about the flamenco, and how the dancers use their layered skirts in the same way that birds fan their feathered wings in mating rituals, using slow, seductive motion. I've been thinking about the clicking of castanets during the dance, and how perhaps they sound something like crickets chirping in the background. I've written in the past how some of the old pieces of classical music include sound patterns and repetitions similar to the songs of certain birds. The flamenco is a dance that seems to recreate the beauty and wild formality of life. We humans, via dance and music, remain, in our way, interwoven with the other species that share the planet earth.