It's 10:59am on Wednesday as I type these words. Last night I had the pleasure of performing with a newly-arrived dancer. Her name is Genoveva. While she's new to the DC area, she's definitely not new to flamenco. She's got a lot of impressive experience already:

Miguel’s La Bodega Tablao, soloist, Austin, Texas, EE.UU 1996-1998
Festival del Desierto, soloist, San Luis Potosí, México 1999
Boston Flamenco Ballet, soloist, U.S. Tour, EE.UU. 2002
Axarquia, soloist, Madrid, España 2003
Gitana Cortes Company-Joaquín Cortes, apprentice, Madrid, España 2003
El Juglar, soloist, Madrid, España 2004
Las Carboneras, soloist, Madrid, España 2004
Flamenco;Truth and Beauty, solista, Austin, Texas, EE.UU. 2004
Compania Maria Juncal Borrull, Madrid, Espana 2004-2005
El Cristo, Antonio Hidalgo, Albuquerue, NM, EE.UU. 2005
Flamenco Women, solista, Austin, Texas, EE.UU. 2005
Al-Andaluz, soloist, Madrid, España 2004-2005
Gitanerías Tablao, soloist, Mexico D.F. 2005

I just happened to have her resume, so I just cut and pasted it here. Anyway, not surprisingly, I didn't find out Genoveva was performing at Las Tapas until like an hour before the show. I wasn't too concerned. I knew of her extensive tablao experience already so I knew that all we needed was a five minute rehearsal right before going onstage.

Genoveva just quickly described to me her alegrias something like: two letras with a falseta in between, subida, silencio, fast escobilla, tapao, bulerias de jerez and finish sitting down. OK, got it. No problem. Still, I was wondering how I am going to know when the letra sections are over or when to switch from escobilla to tapao? We were winging it enough as it is. Welcome to the world of tablao flamenco! :-) But I didn't want her to cut and rearrange her choreography too much on account of me. It just meant I had to really focus.

OK, so we go downstairs. I play my opening guitar solo and segue to Sevillanas. Anna Menendez and Genoveva walk onstage and begin the show with the usual four coplas.

Anna does her solea--impressive as always. Even though I've seen her dance many many times, I try to approach each show as a new one. I could put my mind on auto-pilot, but that wouldn't be fair to Anna or to the art of flamenco. Instead I really concentrate and get inside the music and the dance so I can catch unexpected new rhythmic and choreographic ideas. Sometimes she'll try out a new step without telling me or I just might notice something really cool in her movements that I hadn't noticed before. In any case, Anna always puts everything she's got into her performance and never fails to impress me week after week.

OK, next is the new girl Genoveva. Half of me is excited to see what she's got and the other is nervous that I won't be able to catch the subtle cues--I've never worked with her before! So for this first set, she does an alegrias. I play an introduction not knowing exactly what tempo she wants. I figure she can slow me down or speed me up with palmas before she begins. She goes straight into the dance without correcting my tempo. So far so good.

We do the first letra, then the falseta, then the second letra and build up speed, close and go into silencio. Pretty standard stuff. Thank God she's really good at giving cues with her eyes. And when I didn't know what she wanted she was good about discreetly giving me a verbal cue, "Falseta!"

Genoveva is obviously very experienced in the tablao. She's confident going onstage with little or no rehearsal cuz she knows that she adjust to the situation at a moment's notice. For the falseta, I just made something up but I wasn't sure if she was going to know when I was done. But she did. I was starting to get a little more relaxed and comfortable, but not too much. The dance is only halfway done and anything could happen.

We did the silencio and went into the escobilla...

[Yikes! It's 12:06pm and I have a 1:00pm rehearsal so I'll continue this later...]