LLAMADA -- A CALL TO PLAY, HERE IN JUERGABLOG

I didn't get a chance to write a post last week because I'm swamped with writing final exams and generally scrambling in the end-of-semester crunch at my "real" job teaching human anatomy and human biology. This week doesn't look much more hopeful as far as blog writing goes.

But I would like to send a call -- a llamada -- out to all of my flamenco friends around the world to send me information about upcoming summer shows and workshops, and I will compile everything into a calendar.

And another llamada for any flamencos -- dancers and musicians, amateurs and professionals, aficionados and people who are just discovering flamenco -- who would like to write guest posts on this blog. As a virtual gathering place, I would like for this blog to be about much more than me, but about all of our experiences with flamenco, for it is an astoundingly powerful artform, personal and solitary yet universal at the same time.

One of my anatomy students from Iran mentioned to me that he was intrigued by the name "juergablog," specifically the "juerga" part. He said there is a similar Persian word that describes a gathering of people, a congregation. When I asked him to describe the word a little more, he said the word in Farsi can be pronounced Jirga or Jorge or Jarge, and it meant getting together and throwing a feast, traditionally to show the king the spoils of the hunt. I liked that it can also refer to a group of artists, writers, poets...

A "juerga" in flamenco is definitely a gathering, usually a party, and there always seems to come that point in time when someone opens up with palmas, and then someone starts singing. If there is a guitar anywhere in the vicinity, it makes it way into skilled hands. The spontaneous sharing of music has begun. Dancers dance, take their turns joking around or showing off if a buleria is playing, flirting with each other if it is a sevillanas... if everyone is really lucky, an impromptu solea or siguiriya will erupt. Ah, I just remembered Antonio Vargas pulling me into a siguiriya duet at a juerga in Taos once -- absolutely thrilling.

Some of the most stunning, raw, and genuine moments are shared in these improvised juerga moments. And I would like to somehow translate that energy onto the page here.

At any rate, please, if you have any summer info for me to post, or if you would like to write a post on this blog, comment below or send me an email, facebook message, or text. Let's all sing, dance, play, read, and write together.

Abran las palmas...

REMEMBERING MY AFICIONADA MOM ON MOTHERS’ DAY 2012

I had written this post in bits and pieces throughout the day this Mothers’ Day, but I didn’t feel worthy of actually posting it until I trained today and felt my mother’s presence through the music and movement. So here it is:

Mothers’ Day has been a bittersweet holiday for the past 5 years. My mother lost her valiant and longer-than-expected battle with colon cancer 6 weeks after my last pre-maternity leave performance.

It’s because of my mom that I had every opportunity as a child to take ballet classes, figure skating lessons, piano lessons; my siblings and I also performed Filipino, Hawaiian, and Tahitian dance all over NJ, and my mom acted as sort of our rehearsal dance mistress. But it’s also because of my mom that I didn’t pursue my dream of becoming a professional dancer and choreographer in college but instead got my very “practical” M.D.

We didn’t get along well at all, my mom and I, when I was growing up. We clashed over pretty much everything. I saw us as opposing poles on the earth. It wasn’t until my dad died that we began to see eye to eye. I started to appreciate her lessons about money and survival, and she started to realize that sometimes the most impractical things in life are the most life-sustaining.

My mom visited me a lot after my dad died, and it was during this time that I started dancing professionally. My mom flew halfway across the country to see my shows; she sat in on the company workshops that I attended, and she met the masters who taught them. The maestros called her “Mama” even though most of them were older than she was. She thought Luis Montero was the perfect gentleman, she thought Ciro was a shrewd businessman. And for some reason she thought Manolo Rivera would answer the question that burned inside her, so she asked him: “Why did you choose her?”

She told me that she had asked Manolo this question – Manolo Rivera, an artist so brilliant that his perfect technique is invisible – and I had to fight the lump in my throat. I was making money as a dancer – wasn’t that good enough for her?

Manolo, the man who first inspired me though his sheer beauty to take more than one class a week, gave her his answer: “She has something very special, a spark.” As she repeated this sentence to me, I heard her acceptance, her… satisfaction. She could finally admit that I was a dancer.

My mom would quickly embrace my life as a dancer. She traveled with me on one of my choreography-learning trips to Spain, and it was basically a grand shopping spree – her treat. It was also a time for us to talk – about men, about kids, about our disappointments and triumphs. It turned out that we had a lot more in common than I had ever wanted to admit.

In the end, I can say with 100% confidence that my mom was my Number One Fan. The last actual Mothers’ Day we spent together, she had come to Milwaukee to watch a recital of some of my students. While I was backstage preparing the students, I received the phone call recruiting me to rebuild the flamenco program at the University of New Mexico – Taos. So it ended up being a bit of a self-centered day. I would give back all those dresses she bought me for one more Mothers’ Day to focus on her, share everything I’ve got with her, show her a great day on the town… but she would never want that, the returning of the dresses. I know for a fact that she enjoyed buying those dresses and watching me perform in them as much as I enjoyed dancing in them. And as a mom myself I know how that really feels, the joy of watching my own daughter explore Los Angeles in a new/vintage beaded top and coordinating jaunty hat and sparkly belt from a major spree, my treat, glowing with her personal style -- she’s a theatre girl, a stage manager, you know…

So… perhaps the best I can do for now is keep on training. I still have a long way to go before I can unearth my beloved dresses and perform; my first official comeback show is coming up in the fall, and now I’ve got another one on the books next spring…

For those of you who still have your mom here on earth: enjoy her presence each day. For those of you who miss your mom because she’s not here on earth: go ahead and DO some THING that she would really like you to do. And, BTW, that fabulous, massive, red and black bata de cola that I'm wearing in the photos in the Simone Bonde, Photographer, post on the Marketplace page of this blog? Perhaps my mom's greatest purchase ever.    

GROWL

I had to scold one of my human anatomy classes for being too chatty during lecture this week, and it brought to mind a story that is very, very dear to me:

Antonio Vargas, who played the gypsy father in the Australian film “Strictly Ballroom” and who has travelled the world sharing his rich version of flamenco with the communities who always fall in love with him, is a close friend. I am simultaneously proud and humbled to say that I have shared the stage with him twice. But the first of those times was not as glamorous as it sounds. This is the story of that time.

I was hosting a workshop with Antonio in Milwaukee, and it was the second-to-last day. I received a phone call from some frantic person desperately begging me to agree to a last minute request for a performance; I had been recommended by a friend of his who had hired my dance company for a very lovely show at the Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum, http://www.villaterracemuseum.org/. Happy about such a glowing referral, I asked for more details.

The show would be the very next day, at a time that would be right after the workshop ended, for a grand opening of a bank in town. He had a decent budget to offer and wanted four performers. I told him I would get back to him after speaking with my dance partner and guitarist – and Antonio. If we were all very, very lucky, the Great One might agree to perform at a greatly reduced rate.

Everyone was available, and Antonio said he didn’t want me to lose a gig: he would do the show for the same amount as everyone else.

We rehearsed that evening. It was an easy rehearsal, as we all knew each other well and the show would be brief. Antonio wanted to perform a Siguiriya; I could barely keep up with palmas to accompany him.

There would be no costume changes, so we brought one costume each to the workshop the next day. The men changed at the studio, but I decided to wait until we arrived at the bank – I planned on wearing a bata de cola, and that was not going to fly in the car ride over.

When we pulled into the parking lot, I doubled-checked the address several times. Instead of the gleaming bank tower that I was expecting, we faced a local, run-down supermarket. As I searched for my contact’s phone number, said contact appeared, waving us in from the front doors.

I entered into my own personal Twilight Zone episode: the “bank” was two teller windows cut out of the far wall of this mom-and-pop place, with some “special” linoleum freshly laid to separate the bank from the rest of the dingy, outdated store. That linoleum had been cleared of a huge stand filled with lemons, just for us. And between our “stage” and the front doors stood the check out lanes.

My faithful guitarist, the venerable Peter Baime, was already busy setting up his equipment, and I turned to Antonio with every intention of telling him he could wait in the car til we were done. But he just smiled broadly, put on his flamenco boots, and began warming up.

Our now-beaming contact led me to the employee bathroom to change. “Dark” and “creepy” are nice words to describe the behind-the-scenes area of this place, complete with leering employees lingering in the shadows.

The bathroom itself had no hook to hang my costume on, but plenty of soggy lettuce on the floor to ruin my shoes on. I changed as quickly as possible, never allowing any bit of costume or street clothing to touch any surface, and saving my flamenco shoes for the luxurious linoleum.

I ran past the instant soup and toilet paper and cereal to our stage. The guys were ready to begin, and, frankly, I was ready to just get it all over with.

My dance partner, John "El Polaco," and I opened with Sevillanas. Simple enough. Until I realized I was hearing the “beep-beep” of the cashiers ringing up items. A few customers were watching us, but the rest were… checking out their groceries!

The beeps continued through John’s Farruca as well as our Caracoles duet. Some little boy banged his mother’s cart into the lemon stand at one point. A few lemons rolled onto the floor. I remember thinking how relieved I was that only a small handful of the workshop students were able to actually make it to this dismal affair.

And then it was time for Antonio’s solo.

Well… the Great One danced with a fury and a focus worthy of a command performance for a queen on the finest stage on earth. I could barely keep up with the palmas again, except for my excitement over his sheer presence.

There was no “beeping” from the cashiers. The world had stopped to watch the man dance.

I changed out of my bata de cola in the car with the guys guarding the windows – there was no way I was going back to that bathroom again -- and then we went out for much-needed drinks. It was at the restaurant that Antonio explained:

“It’s shows like those that make you into a tigress. Once you can reach every person in a place like that, you can reach the person in the back corner of a huge, beautiful theatre. It’s all the same. It’s all about being a tigress.”

Rrrrrroar!

     Antonio and me after watching a show in Chicago

 

   In "regular" life, Antonio is such a sweet man -- a pussycat. My (then-future) husband caught this end-of-the-evening moment. Many thanks to him for finding these photos.

99% WORK

I had only been studying flamenco for a year when Teresa Cullen, the director of Teresa y Los Preferidos Spanish Dance Company, the company I had been asked to join just a few months earlier, urged me to take the Ciro workshop she was sponsoring that summer. Someone had dropped out at the last minute, and she wanted me to fill the spot; I wouldn’t even have to pay for it! She insisted I could handle it. As ready as I didn’t feel, how could I turn down an opportunity to experience a living legend?

I stood in the very back of the tiny, cramped studio, sweating as much from the humid Chicago-in-July air as from my frantic efforts to mimic the wiry man’s exquisite movements. How in the world did he manage to do all that with his arms… and then the footwork… and the posture… but those arms…

I assure you, I was easily the least experienced and most pathetic dancer in the class. By far. Everyone who is anyone has studied with Ciro. And I was well on my way to becoming… no one, as far as I was concerned. It was a miserable two weeks of utter confusion: apparently, I didn’t really know how to count to twelve (Ciro was giving us a Solea), and my body was so unconditioned for the stresses of dancing at this level that I injured the base of my right big toe.

But Ciro is a gorgeous, gorgeous dancer to watch, and that alone was worth the agony.

The final day of the workshop arrived, and the choreography was a big tangle in my head. Each dancer took a turn to say an individual goodbye to the maestro as he unwound on the deck of Teresa’s home. I waited til the bitter end, the last dancer, half hoping that he never noticed that I was ever there in the studio.

Ugh, it was my turn, he was waiting for me, and I clunked up the wooden steps to face him. I forced a smile onto my mouth and a feeble “Gracias” from my throat and was turning to run away, when he said to me, “You, you are OK.”

Was he talking to me? The deck was empty. I just kind of nodded my head or something. He didn’t seem like the kind of person who would hand out fake compliments. Then he continued with the words that would define my career:

“Flamenco is 99% work and only 1% express yourself.”

That was it. I was dismissed. I think I actually did run away. But I don’t exactly remember. All I was thinking was, He thinks I’m OK, he thinks I’m OK! Kind of like that classic Sally Fields moment at the Oscars back in the 80s.

But the next day, I was working. Slowing down every movement, analyzing that man’s arms in my head and trying to reproduce them in my body, millimeter by millimeter, muscle fiber by muscle fiber. I relearned the footwork patterns and drilled them. And drilled them. And drilled them with a metronome as my accompaniment. (Ciro is an absolute stickler for compas.) Then came the painful process of layering armwork onto footwork – and attempting to make it all look beautiful and effortless. I don’t think I ever really made that particular solea look all that great as a company member. Days, months of work, and I was still, really, a beginner.

Now, here I am, a professional making a comeback, and what did I decide to do over this past week, after spending a few weeks focusing only on basic posture, arm and footwork exercises? I decided to work on the last choreography that I was working on, a delightful buleria from the fabulous Roberto Amaral in Van Nuys, CA; that was over a year ago when I thought I was making a comeback and started this blog. (Go ahead and read those 3 posts from 2011.) Luckily, I had videotaped the piece at the end of class, so I have been able to study it. And work it: remember the syncopation, the arms, the body movements, the myriad changes in direction… and slow it… all… down. Work every element separately, millimeter by millimeter, muscle fiber by muscle fiber. Then blend the elements together, slowly at first. And then gradually bring it all up to tempo together. Backtrack to correct mistakes, then continue to push to perfection. Ahh, how good it feels to work. 99% work.

When I first brought the final chunk of choreography back up to tempo, now worked so that my body could handle the choreography and the choreography could be alive in my body – I found myself smiling. Pure joy. 1% express yourself.

Ciro and I would work together many times more, one-on-one, on some stunning choreographies, and I can still confirm that he has always been absolutely right. This new buleria is far from what I would consider for myself “performance-ready,” mainly because I am not yet strong enough for a performance. (I videotaped myself, and I can see all of the weaknesses, certainly a topic for an upcoming post.) But I know for sure – thanks to the great maestro’s advice to a humble beginner – that as long as I put 99% of my effort into working on the technique for this piece, I will at some moment earn the freedom to express the 1% that is uniquely myself.

LLAMADA –

I have some precious photos of Ciro and myself (he actually used to call me “Preciosa,” and I’m a bit choked up at the memory of the nickname), but they are all still in storage in Santa Fe, NM, and I have no digital files of them with me here in Los Angeles. If anyone out there has their own photos of Ciro that they would be willing to share here, I would love to post them. Please let me know, and I’ll give you instructions for getting them to me. Thank you!