Miguelito. October 5, 2006 8:09pm (photo by Natalie)

It's 11:12am on Friday as I type these words. Last night at the Andalucía was kinda cool cuz besides the fact that I performed with Pam de Ocampo who danced beautifully. What was cool was that we had some new friends in the audience who came especially to see the show. One of them, Natalie, brought her camera and offered to take pics--but as you know, it's a challenge to get a good shot here at the Andalucía.

In retrospect, I realized I should've invited her to come onstage and dance Sevillanas with Pam, but the restaurant was packed and the manager, Monica, asked me to start playing guitar a little earlier than usual--I think the entertainment is sort of a way to placate the customers while the kitchen catches up with the food orders.

Meanwhile, there was a major accident on 495 which seriously backed up traffic so Pam was running late, but I wasn't worried--I knew she would've called if she was going to be very late.

I was hoping to at least tell Pam the program for the evening but even if she arrived in the next few minutes I would be onstage already. The frustrating thing about situations like this is that I can't communicate with the dancers when they're offstage. Like for example, on Tuesdays when I perform at Las Tapas, I customarily start the show with some guitar solos while the dancers are upstairs changing. Occasionally they'll take longer than usual and I'll improvise an extension to my guitar solo until I see them coming down the stairs. I can remember one time though that I played for like 20 minutes instead of the usual 5 cuz one of the dancers was running late. I suppose I could just stop playing, leave the stage and go upstairs and ask what's going on, but that would break up the continuity of the show.

You get the idea. Thing is that years ago I remember when I used to do shows with certain dance companies and after a while I figured out why they asked me to play guitar solos--it was to fill-up time while the dancers changed costumes. Ugh. So nowadays I get annoyed when I'm onstage playing guitar before the dancers take the stage and they seem to be taking longer than usual to get ready.

End of rant. Anywayz, I blog about things like this not to be a whiner but rather to give you an insight into the reality of what it's like being a full-time flamenco which is mostly fun of course. For the record, Pam arrived just in time to start the show and as expected, she won over our audience with her dancing, grace and charm. Check out the pics...