Samantha, Miguelito and Ginette posing after the show at Tapeo. February 10, 2007 9:26pm (photo by Ginny)

It's 2:24pm on Sunday as I type these words. It was a late night last night so I just got up a short while ago, chatted online with a flamenco friend, got some breakfast and settled back down in front of the computer to publish a few pics from the Saturday night flamenco show at Tapeo.

Just like last week, the dancers were Ginette Perea and Samantha Zerpa. So far this combination is working out very nicely. Besides being very good dancers and feeling very much at home performing onstage, there's that special chemistry that we seem to have and we're not the only ones to notice it. Even the members of the audience commented on it too.

Admittedly, Samantha is just getting used to performing with live guitar, but she's got an excellent sense of timing and I can start to feel her responding to my music and vice-versa. And like many of my dancer friends, flamenco is not only her passion, but it's also a sort of escape. No matter what stressful things were going on earlier that day, when Samantha takes the stage, she totally immerses her self in the flamenco ambience and we get to see another side of her, a more passionate side, and Ginette and I feed off of that in an artistic way of course, and allow her take us on a flamenco journey. Pretty cool stuff!

As for Ginette, I've been working with her almost every week for the past three years now and as I said to one of the members of the audience after the show, "I never get tired of performing with her because she really listens to the music and in moments of inspiration spontaneously comes up with beautiful rhythmic variations. So I always have to stay alert. It's actually pretty exciting just to see what she'll come up with next."

Someone else commented, "That must be very difficult to not know what's coming next." Well yeah, if you're just getting started accompanying dancers, it is hard. But between the two of us, we've got enough experience to pull it off with confidence. Borrowing terms from sports psychology, when you're on top of your game and totally in the zone, it's almost as if we are one: in this mental state I'm able to pick up on Ginette's very subtle cues and instantaneously provide the appropriate guitar accompaniment and she answers back with more cool dance moves and it just goes on and on back and forth. It's challenging but it's very very satisfying when you're able to pull it off successfully. And this is only the tip of the iceberg. Add flamenco singing on top of all this and the experience gets taken up to another level!

Ginette responded, "You don't realize it, but there is a lot of communication going on between the guitarist and the dancer and Miguelito is really good at following me."

You get the idea. Going off on a tangent...this morning I read the interview with dancer Sara Jerez-Marlow titled The Whirling World of a Flamenco Dancer in the Sunday Source section of the Washington Post. I enjoyed reading it of course and was very pleased that she mentioned DCFlamenco.com to the interviewer. Thanks Sara!

And the timing is perfect since the article was published as Lisner Auditorium's 7th annual Flamenco Festival just got started. Anything to make more people aware of the local flamenco scene is a good thing. But more importantly, this 15 minutes of fame, is a great opportunity to squeeze in a dash of education about this very popular but often very misuderstood art form. Loved the way Sarah responded to the question, "The dance at times seems very serious and dramatic. What's going through your head while you dance?"

Sara said, "...you listen to what the cante [song] is doing; you get into the words or the music that surrounds you. I get a lot of energy from the people in the audience, and it really sends me to a different place, whether it's a happy dance or a sad dance."

OK, enough talk. I know you people love to see pics, so here you go. Enjoy!