Morgan. April 11, 2009 3:52pm

Allow me to digress for a moment. Just realized that for quite some time now, I've been publishing blogs featuring pics of this and that flamenco event and for the accompanying text, I've been writing about something completely different, usually something personal. Oh well...nearly 500 blog entries later (you're reading #490), the statistics speak for themselves: the blog is consistently the most popular section of my website! So I do have an audience, yay! :-)

Katie. April 11, 2009 3:56pm

Come to think of it, as technically dazzling as flamenco can be (whether it's dancing, guitar playing, singing or palmas), for me, I find it more satisfying to focus on expressing myself through my music knowing that along the way, my audience will be emotionally touched (on some level, hopefully deep).

Bala. April 11, 2009 3:58pm

Kinda reminds me of when I was a music major in college. Between classes, I used to work on my fear of stage fright by practicing outdoors where lots of students passed by. Whenever a student did sit down next to me, I did feel the nervousness but learned how to keep going no matter what. Then of course when a pretty girl sat next to me, I made the mistake of wanting to impress her and instead of expressing myself (as I should have been doing), I focused on dazzling her with technical skill by playing more difficult pieces while in my nervous state. While I was able to pull it off most of the time on a technical level, I didn't feel emotionally satisfied—in plain English: it wasn't as fun. On the other hand, it was still an easy way to meet girls. :-)

Karina. April 11, 2009 4:04pm

OK, so in today's school show, I went in realizing that my guitar technique was kind of lacking, but when it came to accompanying the dancers I kept in mind that one does not have to be a virtuoso to be a flamenco guitarist.

You still have to be good enough on guitar to not have to think about technique and consequently be able to devote most of your attention on tastefully accompanying the dancer or singer. So I did just that. And as a group, I'm proud to say that the dancers and I really made an impact on our audience. In fact, after our lecture/demo the teachers and parents were raving about how it was rare that these students were quiet, attentive and engaged, especially considering the presentation lasted an hour and 15 minutes!

Lillian. April 11, 2009 4:06pm

And yeah, I have to give credit to especially to my colleagues Ziva Cohen and Jaime Coronado. Back in the early 90's, I did school shows with them all the time and some of their presentation skills have rubbed off on me. I'm sure if they were in my audience at today's school show, they'd come up to me afterwards and say, "Hey Miguelito. Those are my lines you're using!" Guilty as charged! :-)

Syliva, Amy, Estela and Daniel. April 11, 2009 4:17pm

Furia Flamenca director Estela Velez and flamenco guitaristTorcuato Zamora. April 11, 2009

So that I'm not completely remiss, let me say a little something about the pics. I have to give credit to Estela Velez and her company Furia Flamenca. You can't tell from the pics, but it was quite cold and windy where this performance took place and they still performed quite admirably! I could barely stand the cold as I took these pics and the same goes for my friend and fellow flamenco guitarist Ayhan Ozdag, who came all the way from Ashburn, Virginia to see the performance.

Anywayz, I got a lot of fun stuff planned for this weekend:
1. Friday night flamenco at Cabanas with dancer Ginette Perea and friends
2. Saturday rehearsal and performance with Arte Flamenco at the Creative Alliance in Baltimore
3. Sunday hanging out with friends on the Georgetown waterfront (temps will be in the upper 80's!!!!)

So I should go to bed, rest up and save my energy. Good night!