Duende Collaborative

What is Duende?

It is a spark of creative inspiration and authenticity that lives in all of us.

As Clarissa Pinkola Estes writes in The Creative Fire, duende is part of the creative impulse that drives us to go “wider, broader, deeper, richer”. She describes it as “the quixotic, eccentric, many cornered self with a capital S…El Duende is behind the instinctual nature, behind the self, it is the breath of the self. An oxygenating system that supports creative life.”

I’m inspired by duende because I see coaching as an inherently creative process that helps us become more ourselves. It draws upon our assets to open up new possibilities. And you don’t need to identify as an artist to have access to this creativity. It lives in all of us.

The vision for the Duende Collaborative is a diverse community of practitioners working in concert to nurture human belonging, creativity and impact. Because it is only together, in concert and in community, that we can go wider, broader, deeper and richer.

Flamenco and duende

In flamenco, duende is a moment of flow and authenticity. It’s when prep gives way to presence. You’re just there, fully in the moment, with the possibility to go deeper and richer. I’ve been in love with flamenco for decades, and being graced by these moments - as a witness, collaborator and learner - is what keeps drawing me back in. For me, flamenco is a lifeline to aliveness and essence that I can’t live without.

And I see a broader relevance in flamenco because it serves as a powerful metaphor for life. It’s an invitation to be the protagonist of your own story. To see others as collaborators with whom you go wider, broader, deeper and richer. To move from the truth of your body. And to see the world around you as a context for flow and authenticity.

From that view, every interaction becomes an opportunity for a duende collaboration! Be it at the grocery store, a family dinner or a coaching conversation. When we open up to what’s messy and true within us, we enter a space of creativity and possibility.

I find a dose of the divine in this dance by my longtime teacher Melissa Cruz. Her deep mastery of the artform + that of these singers and guitarists + their attunement to one another and the moment = embodied duende collaboration. What do you find?