Originally Posted by marinamau:
“Yes, it is Similar. Some sugest that duende is a more profund aspect and angel is more superficial, yet both relate to innate grace and ability to embody music and transmit certain magic, also the ability to dance with no choreography and in the moment. That Je ne se quais that diferenciates a good technician to a great dancer.
As everything in flamenco, it is fairly misterious and undefined.”
“Yes, it is Similar. Some sugest that duende is a more profund aspect and angel is more superficial, yet both relate to innate grace and ability to embody music and transmit certain magic, also the ability to dance with no choreography and in the moment. That Je ne se quais that diferenciates a good technician to a great dancer.
As everything in flamenco, it is fairly misterious and undefined.”
OK try this for size. I sense this is a feeling rather than a definition one arrives at through more cerebral means.
I am not a native speaker of Spanish so I don't really feel Spanish words, but I have lived in Spain and regularly mix with Spanish people. In doing so I start to see patterns in how they use a word.
My take is that duende is a word that expresses something deeply connected with the soul and also the gut. I have never been sure which is better. Gut appeals because duende seems to express something very visceral. It implies something corporeal, earthy with even a hint at base. So something from deep within.
Yet at the same time it implies something from without, something spiritual or super natural.
Maybe angel is the ethereal and duende the more earthly angle of that indefinable something that human beings just have or are.
