PUBLISHED MAY, 2010

MAY 2010 articles | Fronteras | Fashion | Communication | Camp |

Atlanta On Stage

More than a show, Fronteras 2010 weaves a strong flamenco community. By Julie Baggenstoss

Above, Natalia D'Angelo takes the circle during a fin de fiesta, performed by students of Rina Menosky. Below, Stephanie's students strike a pose in a bulerías. Photos by Edward Zeltser. Photos of Fronteras 2010 are available now.   See the pictures by photographer Edward Zeltser >>. More photos & DVD order forms are coming soon!

Congratulations to the dancers, singers, guitarists, cajón players, and palmeros who performed in Fronteras 2010. Oh, and let's not forget the violin player as well. Over 70 performers as young as 4 and as old as, well, 50+, took the stage at the Robert Shaw Theater at North Atlanta High School on May 15. Through tangos, guajiras, soleá por bulerías, seguiriyas, rumba and more, they showcased flamenco to an audience of friends, family, and aficionados.

The show is the sixth annual flamenco student expo on the theater stage, produced by jaleolé. Each year, Fronteras aims to bring together flamenco aficionados, students, and professionals, with students of all teachers in Atlanta invited to participate. With so many performers on stage, Fronteras has also become an annual showcase of teachers' choreography and artistic direction, as well as student achievement.

In 2010 the show also reflected the great amount of crossover taking place -- students studying from multiple teachers; accompanists working with different groups of dancers; teachers appearing on stage with one another to support students. Every thread of collaboration and cross-study weaves a flamenco community that is stronger in spirt, richer in talent.

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¿Sabe Usted Hablar 'Flamenco'?

How to begin to move up the flamenco communication ladder By Erica Poole

This is the 2nd of a three-part series exploring the non-verbal signals that make flamenco happen.

Part II - What should I keep accessible in my tool belt as I climb each rung of the flamenco ladder?

	Flamenco by video
	Paco Sevilla graciously honored my request to analyze two videos of dancers. I showed him two videos that were both "por alegrías." I asked him to speculate the pre-communication the dancers had with the guitarists, as well as the non-verbal communication Sevilla witnessed for both dancers during the performances. By picking apart dances this way, we can learn to visualize and construct our own movements, once we have acquired a strong grasp of cante structure. Start small and isolate one or two tools that you recognize. Watch: Noelia Sabrerea dances por alegrías - Part I  Watch: Noelia Sabrerea dances por alegrías - Part II  After observing video clips of Noelia Sabrerea dancing alegrías, Sevilla commented, envisioning himself as the dancer, "I would enter during the singer's salida and then [would want] two letras of cante, each followed by a falseta. The letras will be the same with a corte after the first tercio and a complete coletilla. At the end of the second falseta, the guitarist should slow to a stop. The silencio will be a normal one, very, very slow, followed by two more falsetas, fading to a stop. Call for castellana and build to a close. Escobilla, normal, building to many stops (very rehearsed --- in an unrehearsed version, there would probably be no stops until the major one that precedes the 'a palo seco' section. Guitarist comes in with music at a pre-arranged spot (no call that I can see) and singer comes in with bulerías de Cádiz at the pre-arranged pellizco she does. Then, falseta and second letra to finish."  This would be too much to tell a guitarist right before going on stage, and would be more useful in a lengthy rehearsal. A good dancer could do most of this without rehearsal or much explanation, but it would have to have many more llamadas to indicate the changes. Watch: Ivan Maya dances por alegrías and bulerías de Jerez  After viewing the video of Ivan Maya dancing alegrías and bulerías de Jerez, Sevilla remarked, "This one is much easier to accompany. I was able to play along with most of it. It is also highly rehearsed, but could also be done without rehearsal and just wouldn't have all the synchronized stops. The llamadas are clear, with the exception of the call for the cante in the beginning --- I couldn't follow the rhythm of that one because of all the silence, but I suspect that it could be played straight and come out fine. [The dancer] enters during free-form modern cumple. Cante por Cantiñas de Pinini [appeared to be] straightforward. [There was an] obvious call for falseta. All of the footwork is easily accompanied. The Pre-arranged point where the cante comes in may be a coletilla. Then, [there was] pre-arranged time for the guitar to fade out and begin "a palo seco." All of the rest of this dance --- the walking around and posing --- seems to be left up to the guitarist ---come in and out, play a chord here and there, a bit of falseta, leave silence or play rhythm "a palo seco." It doesn't matter --- everything works. These performers have obviously worked together a lot, but a first time guitarist could also do this pretty well. At some point the singer comes in with bulerías de Jerez, rather than Cádiz."

What would you do if you had a guitarist and singer ready to accompany you and a flamenco teacher nowhere in sight to run interception in case you made an error? My curiosity led me to inquire and research how student dancers can learn to become self-sufficient, stronger communicators in improvisational, cuadro settings. I equate this situation to riding a bicycle without the training wheels. And, in this case, choreography would be analogous to training wheels. Choreographies aim to show us what is physically possible within a palo. It can be startling to recognize how much movement and footwork can fit within just one compás!

When Paco Peña Company dancers, Ángel Muñoz, Ramón Martinez, and Charo Espino gave their "por tangos" master class last October, I posed this question to them. Together they agreed: You have to feel it... improvise what you know, and that knowledge has to be ample. Your body can't do what it doesn't know.

This is all the more reason to devote ourselves to regularly attending 'técnica' (technique) classes, so that our pasos become part of how we move rather than just an inserted step for choreography. Bailaora Eva la Yerbabuena has been quoted as saying, "Technique is essential, but you need to control it rather than have it control you."

As student dancers, we have to remember that someone else is the 'brains' behind our choreography, having already thought through how to structure the dance. Yet eventually, we need to learn to exert our own control and become comfortable with structuring our own moves. Flamenco guitarist, Paco Sevilla, summed it up best when he said, "Steps are like words...they cannot be copyrighted. We all learn them from each other. They are the building blocks of flamenco. Combinations of steps are like sentences. They are a little more personal than individual steps, but even writers like to borrow a good phrase... choreographies are like books. They can be copyrighted, and nobody wants to take credit for someone else's book."

Student expos, such as Fronteras, allow us to be interpreters of a choreographer's work. If we want to learn to write our own books, we must stop and assess the drafting tools we already posses as well as the purposes they serve.

Paco Sevilla's book, Flamenco Dance: Secrets of the Professionals, has been a mainstay for me in terms of articulating what a dancer does from a guitarist's point of view. Chapters in this book, such as "Llamadas: Make your Call Count," "Controlling Your Guitarist," and "Cante and the Dance," collectively reveal how flamenco dance instruction can equip us to communicate within improvisational settings. Here are some highlights:

Tools:
Five Purposes of Llamadas - to signal a dancer's entrance, change the tempo of a dance, call for singing to begin, end a section of dance or the dance itself (cierre), or signal the beginning of a desplante in bulerías. Llamadas are not just stamping of the feet. Flamenco artist Teo Morca defines llamadas as the energy of the movement. Llamadas involve the entire body as well as mental determination. These "calls" must "go through" in order to communicate the intent and not just read as a memorized step.
 
Marcajes - used to decorate the cante, transfer moves from one palo to another if the movements fit the compás, and/or let your transitional cambios/ recoges float you on to the next movement
 
Contestación/Respiro - break in the cante which allow the singer to take a breath before repeating a line, giving the dancer time to fill in the gap.
 
Desplantes - from the verb "desplantar," meaning "to uproot"; can get the dancer out of a "marking inferno"
 
Escobillas - from the word "escoba," meaning broom; long, sweeping footwork section that builds to a climax for a transition from alegrías to bulerías
 
Pellizcos - spontaneous twitch in the body (as if you were "pinched") that allows the dancer's personal style to shine through
 
Changing Speeds/Subidas - the simpler the step, the easier it is to communicate a speed change; don't change rhythm and speed at the same time; do so gradually; take advantage of remates for your change of speed
 
Cierres - a llamada used to close a dance or a section of a dance

October 2009 Master Class with dancers of the Paco Pena Flamenco Company. Above, Angel Munoz instructs students.

Dancers, listen to the singer and/or guitarist and lead the cuadro - the singer always has a choice to extend or not. As a dancer, you should listen for what actually happens, not what you anticipate. Beforehand, signal how many letras you want, if you want coletillas, silencio, castellanas (por alegrías), or estribillos; how you will end (rematar) the dance. Do you enter during the singer's salida or after? No one can be in his/her own world. Everyone is focused on what is organically transpiring and impending.

It's about learning structurally sound paso options applicable to cante, arranging them, and having the guts to experiment with them in your movements. If at first you don't succeed, you always have the next compás! Just get back on your ladder!

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A Compass for Compás at Camp

Three high school students share their first flamenco experience at a Spanish Immersion Camp By Cherokee Lawson with contributions by Dominique Buissereth and Kayla Primus

Above, Kayla Primus poses at Carnaval, a party during Spanish Immersion Camp. She and friends (L-R) Cherokee Lawson, Megan Buck, Dominique Buissereth, and Bianca Anderson, attended flamenco class the camp, held by the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese in March. Students learned sevillanas and tangos and could dance both at Carnaval.

During the two and a half days of full immersion into the Spanish language and culture held at the Camp Fortson 4-H Center in Hampton, GA, the hands-down most memorable experience for me (for several reasons) was the introduction to flamenco. Flamenco is a traditional dance originating back to the 15th century and has been passed on as an assimilation of several different cultures including Andalusian, Gypsy, Sephardic, Moorish, and Byzantine. Generally practiced in Southern Spain, it is very foreign to our customary "American" dances.

The dismal attempt our camp "family" made to perform it was humorous, to say the least, but we had fun laughing at ourselves and improving our "skills." I remember coming into the room feeling nervous and excited; I had seen flamenco danced before, and it did not look easy. I was absolutely right.

Ten minutes in, everyone in the class was shedding any superfluous articles of clothing and moving anxiously to the rhythm. My classmate and camp sister, Dominique Buissereth, explained, "We raised our arms and started rotating our wrists in the air. The teachers, Erica Poole and Julie Baggenstoss, then instructed us to continue rotating our wrists in a circle while moving our arms down, and then up again. Soon, with the addition of steps, the dance became much more complicated." The warning from both of our instructors was not understated. With our developing Spanish skills, I caught some of the explanation of flamenco, and what I remembered was the description of how demanding it is both physically and mentally.

Dominique agreed and said, "I never knew flamenco required so many moves... it was a major workout out for my brain and muscles." Kayla Primus, another fellow South Gwinnett High School Comet and camp mate similarly said, "It looked easy to me. Then, I learned the basics of flamenco and quickly realized that I was wrong. Flamenco may look easy, but there is a special technique to the dance that takes training to learn how to master. The footwork has to be in sync with your hands so that everything moves smoothly."

The dance is fluid in movement. Without proper footwear we couldn't quite capture the sound made by the ball and heel of the feet, but we followed the steps as best we could. After stretching, Doña Erica and Doña Julia showed us their flamenco shoes, which had thick heels with metal nails at the ball (the planta) and back of the foot (the tacón) to accentuate the sound of each step. Memorizing steps was only a small part of it. In order to make it as beautiful as the professionals, your spirit has to be in it as well. In summary, the dance is a very strong physical expression of the emotions vocalized within the song lyrics.

Throughout the entire experience at camp, we enjoyed ourselves. There was no stress, only good times, great food, and fun, new activities at every turn with just enough time to relax in between. There was a lot of time to bond with new people, improve language skills during meals, play games, or rehearse the big family skit at the finale. In the evening of each day, there would be a dance party called Carnaval (Carnival), where the assigned families could intermingle with each other and share (in Spanish) all they had done, and, best of all, demonstrate their newly acquired dance skills.

Joining in the dances with a partner really broke the tension and made everyone feel at home. The students from South Gwinnett all got together to practice the sevillanas steps, plus the four count tangos, we learned in flamenco with each other. Although there were people of every level of Spanish, communication was never too hard, and it was the most awesome, unforgettable weekend I may ever experience.

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