Flamenco-filled Saturday. June 2, 2007
Miguelito and Ginette Perea performing at Sol de España in Rockville, Maryland. June 2, 2007 12:56pm (photo by Gina)
It's 1:20am on Monday. Been a busy but fun weekend and got lots of work to do so I'll keep the commentary brief (don't I always say that?) 
.
So anywayz, on Saturday dancer Ginette Perea and I had a school show at Sol de España restaurant in Rockville. A local private school hired us to give a short lecture demonstration about flamenco. Meanwhile, the restaurant served the students and teachers an authentic Spanish lunch which began with tapas portions of tortilla española, followed by authentic paella and finished off with a tempting selection of Spanish desserts.
So maybe I wasn't as mentally alert as I would've preferred, but I had a late night. But since I had been giving presentations a lot lately, I could almost do it in my sleep by now. Hehe.
By the time we got through the opening Sevillanas, I was pretty much awake. Nothing like a jolt of inspiration doing what you love to get the blood pumping. Ginette's mom was there and she gladly volunteered to be our photographer. Here are a few more pics...
June 2, 2007 12:56pm (photo by Gina)
June 2, 2007 1:08pm (photo by Gina)
June 2, 2007 1:08pm (photo by Gina)
Poor Ginette had to dance on tile. As you know, wood is the better surface for flamenco and ideally it would be non-slippery and hollow underneath. But being an experienced performer she pulled it off like a champ and made it look like everything was under control.
June 2, 2007 1:09pm (photo by Gina)
Fast forward almost 7 hours later, I performed at Tapeo in Arlington, Virginia with dancers Ginette Perea and Sarah Hart. My friend Gil Mendez was there but this time around instead of taking lots of pics, he used his camera and mine to take some videos of the shows. So this time around we only have a few pics from the performance itself.
Sarah Hart dancing tientos at Tapeo. June 2, 2007 7:57pm (photo by Gil Mendez)
Miguelito playing the intro for Ginette's alegrías. June 2, 2007 8:00pm (photo by Gil Mendez)
Sarah and Ginette ready for the next set. June 2, 2007 8:56pm
Ginette and Sarah dancing Sevillanas. June 2, 2007 9:00pm (photo by Gil Mendez)
June 2, 2007 9:03pm (photo by Gil Mendez)
June 2, 2007 9:04pm (photo by Gil Mendez)
Afterwards, a couple of people came up to talk to us and congratulate us on our performance. One girl named Jiraphon (from Thailand) came up and invited me to join her friends at a table next to the stage...
Stacy, Aneta, Jiraphon, Suzana and Edgar. June 2, 2007 10:35pm
A short while later, I was very pleasantly surprised to see a few of my friends from the dance company Furia Flamenca. We grabbed an outdoor table, ordered two pitchers' worth of sangría and just for fun, I conducted a little experiment: after the first pitcher we tried doing palmas por bulerías and took turns doing contratiempo and after the second pitcher, I wanted to see how much better (or not) the palmas became.
The result: after the second pitcher the palmas got better! My theory: something about the relaxing effect of the red wine in the sangría makes one more open to just feeling the compás rather than thinking the compás. This was just a preliminary experiment and until we do this a few more times with consistent results will I be ready to call the results conclusive. Hehe.
Bala and Karina dancing Sevillanas. June 2, 2007 10:31pm (photo by Sylvia Melecio)
Bala, Heidi, Sylvia, Karina and Lillian. June 2, 2007 10:38pm
Karina and Lillian. June 2, 2007 10:48pm
Around midnight, my Furia Flamenca friends went their separate ways. Jiraphon and the girls also left around the same time. So I stuck around a little while packing up my sound system and lights, said goodnight to the staff at Tapeo and got on the metro. About halfway home, I had this craving for a late night snack and decided to get off the metro at Dupont Circle and headed towards Julia's Empanadas since they're open until 3am on the weekends. Got my usual Chilean-style empanada and a can of refreshing of banana strawberry fruit nectar to go with it. Yum!
It was a pretty lively night scene at 1:00am seein' all da people dressed to impress standing in the long lines at 1223 and Five and Fly etc. I decided to walk by Cafe Citron just to see if I'd run into someone I knew and sure enough I saw my friend Carolina standing in the long line to get in. (Carolina works at one of the restaurants where I perform)
So I took her and her friends to the VIP line and got us entry in a matter of minutes, yay! Of course, I was expecting to stay for just one drink and call it a night, but ended up staying until closing. Had a blast of course (thanks Carolina!). It's always fun at Citron. So just before calling it a night, I took this pic of Carolina with one of the bartenders, Jen.
Jen and Carolina at Cafe Citron. June 3, 2007 3:03am
By the time I got home, I was dead tired, but overall it was a fun-filled Saturday and it was worth it!
It's about 2:00am now, and as much as I'd like to blog some more I really should get some sleep so I won't get sick. A little teaser for the next blog: on Sunday afternoon after giving a guitar lesson at noon, my guitar student and I went down the street and caught the shuttle bus to the Washington Folk Festival to checkout a 1:45pm performance by Natalia Monteleón's Arte Flamenco group. I took 524 pictures in during the 45-minute performance! As you can imagine that's a lot of pics to sift through to find the best ones, not to mention edit them, upload them and write a blog about them. So I'll rest up and start fresh in da morning. Well, OK here's one pic to give you a preview of what to expect...
Sarah McKenney dancing seguiriyas. Behzad and Kike (hidden) were the guitarists June 3, 2007 2:00pm
Now I'm really going to bed this time. Good night! 
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