Barcelona: Flamencomania!
By Jason Hart
In Maria
Papapaulov’s article, “The City as a Stage”, she discusses the art form
of Flamenco dance as the birthright of two opposing ethnic groups. The
first of these groups is the Gitanos, while the second is all
non-Gitanos. Before traveling to Spain, I could not fully
grasp the importance of Flamenco as a central aspect of Andalusian
culture. Why would two groups be so engrossed in a seemingly hopeless
struggle as to which one invented one specific type of dancing?
Papapaulov explains that both Gitanos and Non Gitanos identify the
invention of Flamenco, not only with the creation of the art, but with
an ethnicity’s genetic disposition to its performance. For this reason
alone the debate has come into being. I had no idea how pervading and
powerful the dance style was until I saw it wih my own eyes.
My friends and I got off an airplane at the Barcelona airport and took a cab to Las Ramblas,
a district in the Catalunya section of Barcelona. As soon as we stepped out
of the taxi we found a large group of people huddled beneath an awning
on the city sidewalk. From within the crowd we could hear a low, steady
beating of drums, and people shouting and cheering. We made our way
into the crowd which surrounded several men seated atop boxes of some
sort that were used as instruments. In the middle of them on a thin
sheet of ply wood a single dancer stomped his feet in rhythm with the
music. He wore tight jeans and what looked like cowboy boots beneath
them. His lean body was drenched in sweat.
As the drumming
progressed and intensified so did the speed of his feet. In the end he
not only stomped but whirled his arms, and jumped in rhythm with the
sound, over his own feet. I can’t really explain in words what I saw,
but his dance was passionate and incredible. Finally the drumming came
to an end when he hit the climax of speed and finesse, and the crowd
erupted. People rushed the ply wood shook his hand and dumped cash into
the bucket at his feet. He smiled and said nothing. He was too short of
breath.
Over the next few nights we noticed several of these
flamenco crowds forming, with dancers just as passionate as this first
performer. This vernacular art form seemed to spontaneously manifest
itself within crowds all over Las Ramblas, between stores that sold
transnational designer clothes, McDonalds, and Subways.
It seemed to me that the Flamenco performers differed in
their levels of intensity, passion, charisma, and rhythm. One could be
instructed in the dance for decades and still not attain certain levels
of precision and finesse if they lacked a natural inclination for the
dance. It is for this reason that the Gitanos and Non Gitanos stand
deadlocked in their debate, because each must claim ownership of that
certain spark that ignites the infernal passion of the flamenco dance!
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