Mica and Al in da limo. October 30, 2006 7:23pm

I got home from Delaware around noon Tuesday and found my flamenco dancer housemate in the kitchen.

So she said, "I went to Cafe Citron last night and you weren't there."

Feeling like I let her down, I replied, "Yeah, I wasn't there."

I was tempted to explain why, but I was pretty tired, so I just smiled, turned around and went to bed for some much needed rest and decided to save the explaining for my blog which I'm writing now.

Yeah, it's kinda funny how she had recently moved into DC and I had invited my housemate several times to come to my show at Cafe Citron. The laid-back atmosphere and the proximity of the stage to the audience makes it feel like a party--we're always inviting friends onstage to dance Sevillanas, bulerías, tangos etc. Of course, the one day that I decide to take the night off (I've only taken three nights off at Citron in five years!), happens to be the night that she decides to go. Oh well.

As far as I'm concerned, it's cool though...turned out my longtime dancer friend Micaela Moreno aka "Mica" was celebrating her 30th birthday that night and I absolutely couldn't miss it. Yeah, it was on a Monday night and it was two hours away and yeah, I missed my favorite gig of the week, but a 30th birthday only comes once and she's a very close friend.

A little background: I first met Mica in 1995 when she was 19 years old at the Viva Flamenco studio in Rockville where she was studying and performing with dancer/teacher Ena Camargo. We performed together a lot and she became one of my favorite dancers. Soon after that I started my website in 1996 and posted lots of pics of Mica in her shows. Back then in ancient times, I was using a film camera and scanner to publish pics on my website.

In the early days of DCFLAMENCO.COM, some of my friends jokingly referred to my site as the Mica and Edwin website on account of the fact that I published pics of them and just them all the time. This old pic is the earliest one I could dig up at a moment's notice: it's from February 1997 in the stairwell at a now-closed once very famous Spanish restaurant called El Bodegón.

Fast forward nine years later, Mica got married and moved to Delaware and still occasionally performs flamenco when she can get a hold of a guitarist (apparently there are none in Delaware). I omitted the photos of the other party guests since you probably don't know them anyway. But of course, I have some food pics for your enjoyment...