José Oretea with guitarists Richard Marlow and Enrique Jova. April 1, 2007 2:03am

On Saturday, we had our monthly flamenco party here at the Pink Flamenco. That same night my usual Saturday night gig was cancelled on account of some lame-ass basketball game--apparently the crowds were at sports bars instead. But since us performers had already showed up to the gig anyway, the restaurant owner bought us dinner. Just for fun, I asked my favorite waitress to bring me three tapas of her choice: roast lamb chops over a bed of mashed potatoes, jumbo shrimp in sherry tomato cream sauce and grilled Spanish sausage. I got my usual mojito and finished up with a non-Spanish but nevertheless satisifying dessert of apple pie and ice cream.

Some of our friends including Chris, Serenity and Sarah showed up eventually and dancers Nelson Sitton, Pam de Ocampo and yours truly ended up hanging out at Tapeo until 11:00pm-ish anyway.

Pam was going to the Sala Rociera party so I had a ride which worked out very nicely since we arrived fashionably late at the Pink Flamenco just as party had built up its momentum. Saw a lot of the usual faces and a few new ones. A number of my friends from Citron showed up including Ronaldo, a professional male belly dancer himself, who's learning Sevillanas informally from Mariya each week when he comes to my show.

Later in the evening I plugged Jason's Ipod into the sound system that I use at my flamenco gigs. I cranked up the volume. Someone turned down the lights and the dance floor filled-up. Jason changed things up by putting on some rumba every now and then. At one point he went old school and used a CD player, hehe. But with all the people doing footwork, the whole house shook enough to make the CD skip. It was hilarious: each time the footwork started, the music stopped momentarily invoking some laughter. After the first few times, it was starting to get annoying so I had to fix it. The solution: a human shock absorber. I just held up the CD player by its handle for four coplas at a time (about 4 minutes)--a good workout for my biceps. Eventually my arm was about to give out and I asked Jason to go back to using Ipod please!!! As soon as the CD track finished we switched from the old-fashioned CD player to mp3's thank God. As the party guests musically transported themselves to Sevilla, this bought me plenty of time to chill out a bit more before the live music segment of the evening.