Dancer swayed by flamenco history
Vancouver woman drawn to Indian roots in study of Spanish art form
Vancouver dancer-singer Deborah Dawson followed her love of flamenco to Spain and France and, along the way, traced the art’s Gypsy roots back to her family’s native India.
“I started flamenco when I was about 14,” says Dawson. “I saw a show and fell in love with the skirts and the flowers. It was that before the music, before anything else, the visual of it.”
She calls from Tours, France, where she is now, as the only Canadian and woman among the eight members of the mostlyFrench musical dance group Les Noces Gitanes.
The eight musicians, singers and dancers are coming to Dawson’s hometown along with a couple of side projects, the more club-oriented Martine on the Beach and the acoustic dance band SOS Rhumba.
Les Noces Gitanes (the name means Gypsy wedding) had been together as a band for a couple of years before Dawson joined three years ago. In her teens she had pursued flamenco through a scholarship with Vancouver’s Central Flamenco.
“Right after high school I decided to take what I thought would be a year off to study in Spain,” she says. While there, she met singer-guitarist Alejandro Ugartemendia of Les Noces Gitanes.
Study turned to work, as he convinced her to join the band as a dancer and background singer. She, in turn gave their shows a more visual component. “When the boys started the group, it was definitely more about the music, now it’s a theatre show, a lot more dance. The boys get a bit of choreography as well, and we explain where the songs come from.”
Along the way, Dawson learned more about flamenco’s Gypsy roots. The group’s music taps into styles including jazz, flamenco, swing, Bollywood, North African and Latin American rhythms.
“Most of the Gypsies in Europe come from northern India, they left Rajasthan centuries ago,” she says. “They stopped in Turkey, Egypt, and found their way over down to southern Spain. Wherever they stopped they picked up the local music and added their culture to it. That’s a mix that we draw on in our show as well, touching on Indian fusion sounds, Moroccan sounds.”
The band includes one member from Morocco and one from Ecuador, aside from Dawson and the five French players. Dawson herself is first-generation Canadian, her parents Indian by way of Malaysia.
“When I started flamenco, I didn’t know that the Gypsies in Spain came originally from India. When I found that out, it drew me in even more, even though my family is originally from southern India, a different part of the country.
“Still, it captured me even more, to make a full circle to be dancing flamenco. Really it is in some long lost way my roots as well.”
This trip marks the group’s first concerts in North America.