FINGER-CLICKIN’ GOOD DANCE MOVES
Flamenco is intoxicating and raucous – once you get the hang of it!
IFIRST heard the bristling, seductive musical tension of flamenco many years ago. It was in Ballymena. A Spanish group, having performed at a festival in Belfast, had made the journey to a local arts club. I was hooked.
The raw passion of the Arabic, Andaluz and gypsy music mix alongside that insistent guitar strumming — the result was artistic, raucous and raunchy. A combination that I hadn’t often come across in Ballymena before.
Seeing flamenco in Co Antrim is one thing; but to experience it in the heat of a Jerez evening is quite simply intoxicating. The area bounded by Jerez, Cadiz, Seville and Cordoba is the spiritual home of flamenco, of foot-stomping arrogance and primeval screams, a place where hand-clapping and finger clicking is taken to the status of an art form. This is the voice of Al Andalus, the lost glory of Islamic Spain.
I decided, back in Co Antrim, to find out more about this unique cultural phenomenon. Not that I had any expectations I might be good at the dancin’, like. I was once in the Cowtown Museum in Kansas City, where character actors play the parts of gunslingers, lawmen and saloon dancers. The shows are a bit like Bunratty with stetsons, where you’re encouraged to take part.
So I took to the floor with one of the saloon gals, who afterwards confided in me: ‘Honey, dancin’ with you was like tryin’ to move our piano.’
In Jerez, it was lesson time. I left my hotel near the Royal School of Equitation and headed through the old town, past the whitewashed walls of the bodegas, the sherry cellars, and towards San Miguel.
Most of the bodegas sport familiar names: Gonzalez Byass, Harvey, Garvey and Sandemann; the British have been guzzling sherry since Francis Drake — ‘el Pirato’ in these parts — began looting supplies in Cadiz, just down the road.
Later I visited the Tio Pepe bodega. Designed by Gustav Eiffel, it has barrels signed by Margaret Thatcher and Picasso, who both toured the premises — although not together — and boasts the most photogenic of mice, treated to a glass of the best sherry every day.
Jerez produces not just sherry, but brandy, wine and vinegar. ‘To be honest, our vinegar is probably better than most wines you get elsewhere in Europe,’ said one bodega owner, pointing in the general direction of France.
I trundled past old walls, and into a tangle of medieval lanes lined with castle turrets, Arabic baths, former mosques, Christian cathedrals. It sometimes seems Jerez is almost too small to contain all of its clamorous history.
These streets have seen historical A-listers such as Christopher Columbus pass by. In fact, one of the crew of Columbus’s ship the Santa Maria was a local chap called Rodrigo de Jerez. Rodrigo has an extraordinary claim to fame — he’s credited with being the first European smoker.
I rocked along cobbled roads past the 12th-century Alcázar, a Moorish fortress, complete with honey-coloured sandstone arches and surrounded by jacaranda trees.
The barrio of San Miguel goes back to the 15th century, when the gypsies were moved outside the city walls.
Our destination, El Chiqui dance school, is beside the beautiful baroque 17th century church Capilla de la Yedra. The statue of Jesus is somewhat overshadowed by a huge statue to a famous flamenco dancer, Francisca Méndez Garrido. It’s good to get your priorities right.
I didn’t expect to learn much dancing from Carlos Carbonell of La Chiqui flamenco school.
He was a charming gitano, although almost unacceptably handsome and lithesome. But more importantly he was endlessly patient.
‘Uno, doh, tray, quatro, planta, golpe.’ One, two, three, four, tap your toe, stamp. It sounds easy enough, but you also have to make graceful, artistic arm movements while your heels drill into the floor.
That’s how the lessons went in the Barrio de San Miguel at the Academia de Baile La Chiqui. Here in San Miguel — one of two gypsy, or gitano, quarters in town — flamenco is part of the fabric of every day life. Strictly flamenco.
So how did the dancing go? I never really got much beyond clapping (las palmas sequence) and finger snapping (los pitos sequence). And as for trying to master the guitar (el toque), forget about it.
But I left with a tremendous insight into this culture, this art form, this corner of history and the communities that support it.
I only mention all this because the world’s most celebrated flamenco guitarist, Paco Peña, is coming to Ireland next month with his dance company. Oddly enough, he’s not going to Ballymena, but is playing at: National Concert Hall, Dublin, on April 4; Watergate Theatre, Kilkenny, on April 6; Cork Opera House on April 7; Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire, on April 9, and Mandela Hall, Belfast, on April 10. Catch him if you can.