“Dancing With the Stars” has helped popularize nearly every form of couples-based dancing, but one European style remains largely unexamined.
The flamboyant Spanish art of flamenco is instantly recognizable to almost any onlooker. The raised arms, swirling turns and subtle glances can be performed solo or with a partner, but an expressive, rhythmic cadence always underpins it.
This weekend offers the public a chance to learn more about this fascinating, misunderstood art that thrives in so many other places. Flamenco’s local proponents, though few, are intensely devoted despite its lack of visibility.
“There’s just a handful of us here in Colorado and we’re trying to build a stronger base,” said Jeanette Trujillo-Lucero, director of the 25- year-old Colorado Flamenco Society. “We’re pretty isolated, but we’re reaching out with this event.”
The society’s biggest annual show, the 2006 Flamenco Festival, takes place Saturday at the Lakewood Cultural Center, featuring music, dance and flamenco lessons. It offers a wide range of artists, including Juan del Valle, Grupo Maria Vasquez, Gina Martinez and guitarist Steve Mullins.
Del Valle, a San Franciso-based dancer who performs internationally, likens flamenco’s seemingly random stylistic shifts to a conversation.
“It’s improvised, but you have to use grammatical rules to make yourself understood. You don’t always know where the conversation is going to go,” he said. “The phrasing of the music takes years to understand. In flamenco the dancer sets the tempos and leads the musical transitions. You have to think like a composer.”
The various incarnations of flamenco can be traced to Spain’s Andalusia region, which percolated flamenco nearly 400 years ago in a mix of Spanish, Islamic, Sephardic and Gypsy culture. Passionate and intuitive, it nonetheless follows myriad rules and traditions. Del Valle studied ballet, African and modern dance forms before attempting flamenco.
“It has very intriguing rhythms – some of the most complex in Western music, excluding possibly Stravinsky,” he said. “Even people that don’t understand Spanish can understand the emotional drama of it.”
Trujillo-Lucero understands the importance of keeping the tradition alive in Denver. She also runs Fiesta Colorado, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving the Hispanic arts in Colorado. She thinks the cultural environment is more friendly to flamenco than it’s ever been, thanks to an increasingly regional popularity.
“It’s really a nationwide trend. More Hispanics are moving into the center of the United States, so there are more people aware of it in general,” she said. “New Mexico has been pretty hot for years now. They’re in the middle of their 20th anniversary for the biggest flamenco festival in the country. It just hasn’t made its way to Denver yet.”
Trujillo-Lucero has performed with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, visited schools and taught with the Colorado Ballet and David Taylor Dance Theatre. But her heart remains in flamenco.
“Denver as a whole is getting more sophisticated in how it appreciates art, but we should be giving all of them an equal opportunity,” she said. “Flamenco is modernizing now and relating more to the pace of people’s everyday lives.”
Del Valle draws the analogy to different camps of jazz music, where preservationists play the original Dixieland style while others tinker with notes and time signatures, bending it to their own sensibilities. Even in its various translations, it retains a unique flavor.
“You can go hear a jazz concert in this country and the musicians might be from Poland or Japan,” he said. “In the same way you can see a high quality flamenco show in Tokyo, but you instantly know what it is.”
Staff writer John Wenzel can be reached at 303-954-1642 or jwenzel@denverpost.com.
Flamenco Festival 2006
MUSIC AND DANCE|Lakewood Cultural Center, 470 S. Allison Parkway; 7:30 p.m., Saturday|$22|303-987-7845 or lakewood.org.
