Of all the words my father has said to me in thirty-eight years, duende is the one that stands out the most.

i was twelve years old when duende and i first met. It was through my love of performing - theater, dance, artistic rollerskating, anything with a stage - that duende found her way to me. Even at a young age, my father would talk to me about the deep, uncoachable aspects in performing. It was in one of our many conversations about the soul of performance that he told me the story of duende. Of how in our culture there exists something bigger, more alive than inspiration, more soul-felt than passion, and more worthy of chasing than the muses. A word that didn’t translate in English but to artists, creatives, and performers is the zenith, the holy grail of sorts, a fusion of art, the self, creativity, and the energy of the cosmos.

The word has traveled with me ever since - or rather i with it. Since that day, i’ve searched out duende on a variety of the world’s biggest and most intimate stages, fusing with her on but a few.

The first time we met was in a play about teenage pregnancy called “Dolls” where i played a teen giving up her kid for adoption. i was fifteen years old. i can recall no details, no words, nothing except the feeling of every line between me and the art, my character, the audience, the message being blurred. i gave into the experience, rode the wave and what rose to the surface was something so full of emotive force that i began weeping at the power that had come over me, shedding real tears during my

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monologue. i left the stage not sure of what had just happened, but knowing i wanted to experience that merge forever.

Seven years later, duende would come to me again. i was in Albuquerque for a belly dancing seminar and our group was invited to attend a flamenco show featuring world renowned dancer María Benítez. From the moment the music started, i was captivated. i had never seen anyone move like that. María was dancing, but it was more than that. She was in some kind of unseen somatic war stomping, clapping, and castanet-ing out the thing that was inside her. That thing was el duende.

Once again lines and reality blurred only this time i was drawn into her. i was right there with her sharing and feeling every grimace, every carving twirl of her wrist and kick-around of her skirt, every battling emotion. i was consumed. It was duende at her fullest force. And i wanted more.

i left María’s show obsessed and more determined than ever to coax duende to me. My body became the vehicle in which i attempted to summon her, calling her in every language of movement i could - Spanish/flamenco, Arabic/belly dance, Hawaiian/Polynesian and Tahitian dance, Queer/drag. But it was all in vain.

Only in surrendering would she finally come to me.

It was a night of endings - the show, her graduate studies, our friendship. And i felt the weight of finality bearing down on my shoulders as i waited in the wings to go on. For three years, my words had failed me. But now at the sum of all things, i needed her to know everything.

That i appreciated her more than she would ever know. That i loved her.

Right before i took the stage, i did something i had never in my performance life done. i prayed. i offered myself, my art, my dance, my body to the universe as a vessel of all things connected to me and beyond me. This is of me, but not for me. Let this be for her. For the words, for love, for life. For the universe.

Again everything blurred, but this time . . . this time, i remembered and felt it all. The fusion of the lights, the costumes, the music, my words, my unrequited love for a straight woman, god - all of it lived in me and flowed out of me as i became the heartbeat of life - the breath of my, hers, our existence. As i danced, i witnessed the entanglement of my energy with duende’s while simultaneously being fueled by the audience’s. It was magic. It was life.

It was a performance high like no other and, as we took our bow, i knew i’d done it.

The post-show reactions sealed it. My steeled professor hugging and congratulating me on my surreal performance, accolades from my fellow dancers i shared the stage with, and her. Her silence and tight lipped smile told me everything i needed to know. i had

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said and shared it all. i had connected. i had come alive. i had become one with duende.

And she hasn’t left my side since.

Today she sits with me on every stage i venture onto flowing in and out of me, playing, dancing, forging, and connecting. We meet up on stages across the world like old friends. Now i’ve asked her to meet me on the page.

And we begin again – i begin again.

But this time it’s different; i’m different. Because now i meet her needs - and leave mine behind. My art is a temple and my performance, my writing is an offering, a prayer – to her, the universe, mi gente, you, us.

When our art and the act of manifesting our creativity becomes the prayer, duende answers by making us, the vessel, the miracle.

We are miraculous creatures. Regardless if we express ourselves creatively or not, we are walking, talking pieces of art. And duende can reside anywhere the water and our souls run deep.

In a piece of music that moves our spirit, calling our souls home. We have a name for that too, cante jondo. Deep song.

In the first breath, the first eye open, the birth of all living things – and in their endings.

Duende is always all around us. Waiting patiently for us to be ready. But in today’s world where fame and ‘reality’ is valued over craft and deeply rooted art, where the world of Face is quickly becoming the only faces we see, duende is dying. And so is her Spanish folk meaning.

Merriam-Webster now defines duende as “the power to attract through personal magnetism and charm” and makes her synonymous with words we already know and understand like “allure, animal magnetism, charm, charisma, and witchery.”

Having been her companion for over twenty years, this is not the duende i know. Nor is it a duende i care to know.

i know she is more than that.

My hope is now, after reading this, you do too.

Because we are the keepers of our tradition, of our language, of our untranslatable words.

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And we owe it to our experiences – past, present, and future - and to ours and each other’s existence to keep our words and language sacred, to keep them whole.

To keep ourselves whole.

So that when duende - or whatever else it is we seek - approaches us, we are ready.

And as one, together, we can soar.

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Me in Hamlin’s Middle School Play, Dolls directed by Miss B. Circa 1991

Me and María Benítez after her show in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Circa late 90’s early 2000’s?!?!?!

© Copyright Haus of Duende LLC and Brandi Amara Skyy

For more of my writings, visit www.brandiamaraskyy.com.

THANK YOU FOR READING!!

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