One thing was strange about her: she often danced in trousers rather than the layered skirt traditional for female flamenco dancers. One theory is that she did this to give more scope to her footwork, which was exceptional, and rather like a flamenco male dancer. Apparently, in early flamenco, women did not do so much footwork, and male dancers used to fill in the steps while sitting on chairs, unseen in the wings. Her style has been described as repetitive because she always did the same dances: "Carmen was a fabulous dancer, but limited" (Antonio Ruiz Soler).