‘It’s Not Because It’s Not There, That It Isn’t There’: Visibility and invisibility within Black flamenco performance

Abstract

Since flamenco's inception, the art form has served as an act of resilience and resistance for marginalized peoples, and now, more than ever before, Black flamenco artists are gaining greater visibility, engaging with the form as embodied activism and interrogation of present and historical injustices. Pointing to the various techniques Black flamenco artists employ to interrogate notions of visibility and invisibility within their performances, this article draws from performance studies, dance studies and Africana studies to analyse the four short films that were created as work-in-progress investigations for London-born Black flamenco artist Yinka Esi Graves's The Disappearing Act (2023). Employing Tavia Nyong'o's theory of afro-fabulation, I examine the myriad ways the piece negotiates Black presence and camouflage within spaces haunted by Spain's role in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and looks to the archive to reach into the past, collapse time and imagine futures. In framing The Disappearing Act as an act of afro-fabulation that negotiates Black presence and visibility within flamenco through a trans-temporal engagement with archival information, I argue that the work refuses the invisibilization of Blackness and Black bodies in flamenco's past, present and future. Choreographic analysis and analytical movement description allow me to examine the ways Graves's site-specific work negotiates truth and untruth within what GerShun Avilez terms spatial justice as her physical body serves as trans-temporal marker of the violence associated with histories of chattel slavery. Finally, I highlight the recently formed Black Flamenco Network – Flamencos Unidos Africanos y Afro Descendientes (BFN – FUAAD) to illustrate how contemporary Black flamenco artists are seeking greater representation via community support and online, intergenerational collaboration.

Notes

1 Since the writing of this article, two more short films, ‘The Island’ and ‘The Door’ (both uploaded 23 February 2022), were added to the online work-in-progress collection. Additionally, Graves presented The Disappearing Act: Una conversación desde un cuerpo disidente, an illustrated talk surrounding the work’s major themes and ideas, at the 2022 Bienal de Flamenco de Sevilla. The live version of the work, The Disappearing Act, premiered in January 2023 at the Nimes Flamenco Festival in France. Discussion of the most recent two videos, the oral presentation and the live performance of The Disappearing Act are outside of the scope of this research, which analyses only the online videos that comprise the piece’s primary work-in-progress research material.

2 Gottschild (1996) coined the term ‘invisibilized’ in the context of African diasporic influences on US-American culture.

3 Ethnographic interviews with Yinka Esi Graves and other members of BFN – FUAAD were determined exempt under category #2b by The Office of Responsible Research Practices of The Ohio State University.

4 In oral presentations of previous versions of this research, I have played audio clips of the Black flamenco artists that I quote at length in an effort to ameliorate/avoid further invisiblization. Rather than speak their words in my own voice, I play the audio recordings as an attempt to evoke their presence in the space, thereby honouring their agency, voices and points of view.

5 El Puente de San Telmo connects what is now known as Plaza de Cuba (on the Triana side) and Puerta Jerez (on the Seville side).

6 For more on the history of African-descended peoples in Spain and Afro-Andalusian contributions to flamenco, see Miguel Ángel Rosales’s (dir.), Gurumbé: Canciones de tu Memoria Negra (Gurumbé: Afro-Andalusian Memories) (Intermedia Producciones, 2016).

7 The first posts on The Black Flamenco Network – FUAAD’s Facebook and Instagram (@ blackflamenconetwork) pages appeared on 31 May 2021.