Feature on Flamenco Dancing in The Bristol Evening Post

The Journey of a Flamenco Dancer

The orange sun has set behind the jagged roofs of this city, so now only tiny stars puncture the sky. The warmth of the day has been replaced by nights chill and instead of the whir of traffic, music and excited chatter streams through the air. The sound of feet pounding rhythms on the floor, frantic clapping and shouts of exaltation hit me. I am surrounded by incredible colours, bright red and green dresses that swirl with every flick of the hip. Men bearing confident smiles, clad in ruffled shirts and black rimmed hats. Everything seems to be boiling on this Spring evening, though it’s not the red wine or taste of the hot potatoes and paprika keeping me heated. It is the intensity and passion of Seville’s Feria- the home of Spanish Flamenco dance.

Every year, Spain celebrates the arrival of Spring, and like the landscape, Seville explodes into life. Thousands of marquees adorn the streets and horse and carts wind through the traffic carrying the residents of this antique city. For six days the Spaniards do what they do better then any other culture I have encountered. They celebrate, they unite, they let go, they dance. The tradition of Flamenco is rediscovered and everyone, from the young to the old, stamp, clap and release all the burning intensity of being human through the magnetic routine of a dance.

It is that intensity that drew my towards Flamenco, and I say drew because that’s what its like. The Spanish say it’s a calling when a foreigner enters into the dance from the outside in. Like any other journey sometimes you don’t know what it is that motivates you to walk or indeed dance along a particular path, but you carry on regardless, unknown of where you’re heading. I have tried and enjoyed so many dance forms over the years. The shoulder shaking of African, the hypnotic grace of ballet, the intertwining partnership of salsa and although I still reap all that these dances provide. They can’t quite beat the rawness that is Flamenco.

I have danced Flamenco for a few years now. For seven months I lived in the Andalucían mountains and would travel for fifty minutes every week through the windy foothills, into the local town, to learn Flamenco. My Spanish isn’t so good, yet words were lost anyway in that tiny dance studio. As long as I stayed focused and held the teachers gaze I would be okay and I would dance. After my stay in Spain I returned to Bristol determined to find a class here. Which I did.

The class is taught by Alejandra Velasco, 36, who has been a Flamenco dancer for twenty years. Born in Madrid into a family of creativity, her father was a flamenco manager, her mother and aunty classical Spanish dancers, her dancing has carried her  world wide. For the past seven years she has been based in Cardiff and teaching two classes a week in Bristol. Monday nights at the Tobacco Factory in Southville and Wednesday evenings in Cotham School Dance Studio.

Bristol, the city that offers every kind of means to express yourself, is heavy with creative classes. Yet what is it about this class that has led me to Seville, stood next to a guitarist and wearing bright red lipstick and a flower in my hair. Perhaps like the Spanish say, it was my calling to do so. Perhaps I felt it to be some kind of therapy, where all of lives stresses could be expressed through a dance form. We are, after all, so used to the grin a bear it attitude of modern society, it’s refreshing to be involved in something that allows us to express all the varied emotions of being human. Even fury, desire, lust. Or perhaps it is simply the incredible dresses, the femininity, the simultaneous strength and vulnerability of the dancers.

There are about fifteen of us in Mondays class, all with our own unique reasons as to why we dance Flamenco. One dancer, Katy Gaunt says, ‘when you get the feeling of passion rise in you, you can become lost. Its like a pain and you dance with every part of yourself. Your body, your eyes, your facial expressions, your soul.’ The majority of women in the class are mature and there is a general consensus that you  need to have experienced life to be able to truly dance Flamenco. Katy also adds, ‘you have to know life to really express it. You have to see the anguish of living on the dancer's face.’ I count the lines that dress the skin of the people I dance with. I try and look further for the signs in their dance moves, that life may have knocked them hard, yet that they dance regardless. Isn’t that an incredible thing about being human, that we have a choice to dwell in our misery or turn it into something spectacular.

I’m excited by Seville. By this time I am swept away with that Spanish passion. I stamp out the tiredness of the evening. I clap the insecurities of the language not resting as easy on my tongue as words I have used before. I dance away the feelings of life's hardships and I let go. It is now the early hours of the morning, the music is still painting the night. Children and the old are still dancing together. My own Flamenco journey has taken me to Seville and tomorrow it will throw me back into Bristol again. And I’m ready for it. Ready to express myself, ready to live, filled with as much passion and intensity as the dance teaches. As Monday's dancer Jo Holmes says, ‘Its more then just a dance; it’s a language. A lifestyle. A way of being.’

For more information on dance classes please visit:

www.corazonflamenco.net