I've got two flamenco learning tips to share with you today. One from Mercedes and one from Ani. We're on day two of Flamenco Tour classes, and the classes have been going like this:
Technique with Mercedes in the morning. Bulerías with Ani right after. Then choreography and castanets with Mercedes after lunch and siesta.
Everybody loves Mercedes. Everybody loves Ani. All is well.
Class with Mercedes
The ladies go in and out of concentrating on the steps and being mesmerized by Mercedes and her magnificence.
My parents crashed the first Flamenco Tour back in fall of 2012. I'm actually glad they did.
I'll tell you why in a moment.
This is how it came about,
I declared that I was going to organize a flamenco trip to Jerez for students interested in studying in Spain with a small group.
There were some chuckles.
And then they realized I wasn’t joking. And they told me they wanted to join.
When is it too late to start learning flamenco? Find out below and watch a video of Mercedes Ruíz dancing as a little girl along with a bulerías clip from Carlos Saura's Flamenco Flamenco.
According to Mercedes Ruíz, "It's never too late do what you want to do." Sure, she began dancing flamenco at the age of four, but that doesn't mean the rest of us are doomed.
I began dancing flamenco at the age of twenty three, or was it twenty two? Pat began when she was sixty nine. Becky began when she was forty four. Many of the dancers I know began in their thirties, forties, fifties, and even sixties. Many danced at a young age then stopped for various reasons only to come back to it years later.
We can begin dancing flamenco at any age
And there is no 'retirement age' for flamenco dancing. We can leave it and come back. And we can continue dancing flamenco as long as we want to. This is something that I absolutely love about flamenco.
It is a dance for all ages.
Older flamenco dancers are in fact respected and honored. This is part of the flamenco culture. (See video clips below.)
A younger dancer may have different goals than an older dancer. And one's desires as a dancer may change over time, just as desires around all things in life will evolve.
But the bottom line is this,
A story on the value of observation from a past Flamenco Tour (followed by four bulerías take-aways):
Sunday night I was writing
About flamenco and Jerez and what I'm doing here and what I want to learn here.
And I set some intentions for the week.
I had a few.
One was to Observe
To observe people dancing bulerías. Especially people whose dancing I liked. In class and out. Anywhere and everywhere.
To watch them, really watch them. And to notice what was happening.
To notice how they responded to the cante.
To notice how they danced with the compás.
To notice when they did what they did.
To notice the things I liked.
To notice the things that worked.
Maybe even to notice the things I didn't like.
And to notice the things that didn't work.
On Monday morning I went to bulerías class
That was the day Ani taught the ladies about dancing on a floor tile. I'll tell you about that in the next post.
It was also the day she read my mind.
I have some more bulerías advice from Ani for you about feeling good today. But first,
Let's talk briefly about steps
Because you learn a lot of steps in in bulerías class.
You could say they are just steps.
To play with.
To practice.
To try out.
To hold on to. (Or to let go of.)
They can even be thought of as tools for understanding how the conversation works.
But going back to the liking them thing...
One day in Jerez
Bulerías doesn’t exist anywhere as it does in Jerez.
It’s just its own thing there
And that's that.
That's why they call it Bulerías de Jerez.
I'm not saying you have to be in Jerez to do bulerías or anything like that.
Not at all.
You can find and do bulerías all over the place.
Nor am I saying you have to be from Jerez to do awesome bulerías.
Not at all.
(Many of you know how Ricardo first got me with his bulerías back in 2006. )
But, anyway, bulerías de Jerez, in Jerez
In Jerez you hear bulerías all over the place.
I want to tell you about some things that help me to feel better when I'm in a funky place. I also want to show you a very cool video and share a flamenco verse with you. But first, some words I wrote last week
(my first week back home post Flamenco Tour)
Coming home I feel overwhelmed.
This is not new.
It is how I usually feel after a trip to Spain. Excited to be back but overwhelmed and sort of confused at the same time.
I want to tell you about green bananas. Because knowing about green bananas will help you when it's time to dance bulerías. (In Jerez or anywhere really).
And so, a short story from Jerez
Tú vas a comer un plátano verde?
This is what Ani asked Ana.
Ani is Ana María López, the bulerías teacher.
Ana is a student from Russia.
Un plátano verde is a green banana.
You don’t eat a green banana
The gathering together. It lit me up at the first flamenco workshop I attended with a guest artist here in town when flamenco was still so new to me. It lit me up with the first workshop I set up with Ricardo in 2007 and with each one since. It lights me up with every Flamenco Tour to Spain.
The community
The FlamencoTour was born of my own struggles studying flamenco in Spain by myself and at the big festivals. The drive to do it was born of my longing to be there studying in an environment that felt safe and fun to me, amongst a small group of others interested in the same thing. Many of my past learning experiences in Spain did not feel (emotionally) safe, and very often the learning did not feel fun at all.
This was a problem.
My dear friend and mentor, master flamenco teacher Oscar Nieto who is based in Vancouver, B.C., happened to be in Jerez last fall during the Flamenco Tour.*
While he was there Oscar got to meet the students and observe some of our classes and activities. Below read some impressions of the Flamenco Tour that he shared with me during a recent chat:
"If someone wants to go to Spain on their own...
How do they know where to go?
How do they know who to study with?
How do they know what to do?
In your trips it's all figured out for them
In your trips they’re safe in their cocoon.
The students come back, and they’ve had a full Spain experience.
They didn’t just go to a studio and take classes, but you encouraged them to be in the ambiente, to get outside of the studio. And then they build social networks. That is really important. Especially for women who are seeking their dream to finally do flamenco in Spain.
Going to Spain was something she'd always wanted to do.
But life kept getting in the way
And then one day she realized that life wasn't going to let up,
that the perfect moment wasn't going to arrive,
that the time to go to Spain to study flamenco was now.
She realized waiting any longer made no sense.
Here’s a rumbas letra and a video of Estrella Morente singing it…
The second letra in this month's Ida y Vuelta series. A guajiras letra and a video of Rocío Márquez.
Aquella noche, caía
la lluvia muy lentamente,
cantaba triste la fuente…
I enjoyed spending the last week of the year with you during the Dance as if You Were in Class With Mercedes Holiday Challenge. Today I share with you one small way you can keep the challenge going (along with a video of Mercedes Ruíz) ...
Great artists tell me
that they spend enormous amounts of time watching those they admire.
Studying their every move and learning by observation.
So, I invite you to enjoy some time observing one of your favorite artists this week.
And since we've been focusing on Mercedes:
This song will make your life better the moment you press play. You could even just listen to the first twenty seconds though that will likely be impossible because I imagine once you get started you probably will want to hear the whole song.
It's Enrique Morente and his daughter Estrella singing colombianas.
As you know the challenge has involved some squeezing in this week, for me at least. But over the past seven days, I've come to see this squeezing more as taking advantage of moments of opportunity.
Por ejemplo:
"Hey, we have a few minutes before going to do (thing we need to go do) Margot, do you want to do an exercise with me?"
Or, "Is my pompi dentro?" I've found myself asking myself while washing a dish.
And you already know about teeth brushing.
Stuff like that ...
Only two days left of the challenge? I kind of can't believe how quickly it's going by...
Squeezing it in
I mentioned yesterday that I had an idea for squeezing in an exercise when you're feeling that there is no time.
Because there is time.
Let me tell you about how I brush my teeth.
Normally I do tree pose without arms when brushing my teeth. I did yoga long before I started flamenco, and tree pose has always been a favorite of mine.
But sometimes I’ll substitute a flamenco exercise, a marcaje or something for the hips.
During the challenge I’ve been doing an exercise from Mercedes when it's time to brush my teeth.
In the morning, at night, and during any brushings in-between.
That's more than four minutes of exercise time right there.
I want to talk about how to get more out of your "time" with Mercedes during this challenge. Because I know it can be hard to squeeze in flamenco activities right now as many of us are busy with family, holiday stuff, and what not.
But before I get to that, a brief snippet from today ~
I decided to take the challenge on the road today while hiking with the family.
So Margot and I listened to Mercedes as we walked.
As it turns out many of her reminders were just as helpful to hiking as to flamenco,
'Respira, despacio, pompi dentro...'
Take 'pompi dentro' for instance:
Making a point not to let your bottom stick out forces you to engage your core which is most helpful in maintaining stability on the rocky and sometimes slippery trail.
My niece is participating in the challenge with me. In part.
She loves flamenco and started taking regular classes this spring after taking a class with Ricardo in Santa Barbara.
“Do you want to do some of Mercedes’s exercises with me?” I asked her on Christmas Day.
She did.
She knew what to expect as she had sat through her class in Jerez a coupe of times. (My nieces spent some time with me and the group in Spain last spring, and Margot happily, patiently, and voluntarily sat through hours of class with Mercedes.)
“Are we going to do the one with the hands?” she asked me as she stretched her arms out imitating the exercise, this exercise.
Will 2015 be the year to go to Spain? More on that below, but first a letra:
Bulerías
Popular
Qué dolor de mi mare
tengo la camisa sucia
no tengo quien me la lave
The sorrow of my mother
I have a dirty shirt
I have nobody to wash it for me
You can listen to it here.
Stay tuned next week for the final letra of 2014 and the final installment of this series of bulerías shared by Zorri. (Don't worry, you'll see more letras from him here and there in the future.)
