Henry Jova and Jesús Serrano rehearsing in the dressing room. May 17, 2008 6:10pm

It's 1-something in the afternoon on Monday as I type these words. Got up a short while ago after going to bed at 6am this morning. Back in front of the computer and cranking out another blog from this busy flamenco-filled weekend.

This time I have the first batch of pics from the Arte Flamenco recital which was held at Slayton House in Columbia, Maryland on Saturday night. I took over 600 pics, so I'm going to have spread out a selection of them over several blog entries.

Some of the dance students I met backstage were surprised that I came to see their recital instead of going to Edwin Aparicio's concert in Baltimore which was going on the same night. As much as I would have loved to go see that professional level concert, believe it or not, student recitals are exciting for me too. Why?

Some of the dancers in Edwin's show were students of Arte Flamenco at one time e.g. Jason Vera y Aragón, Pam de Ocampo and Dana Shoenberg. And over the years, Natalia Monteleón, Arte Flamenco's director and teacher, has produced more performance level dancers than any other teacher in the DC area. (What I mean by performance level is that they have enough understanding of guitar and cante that they can perform a dance confidently with live musicians with little or no rehearsal.)

So for me, it's exciting to see these wonderful future performers in the beginning stages and, assuming they stick with it, watch them grow artistically over the years. It's also fun to make predictions about which ones I think will become next star performers...but enough said, I'll keep that to myself. :-)

Enjoy the pics!