La Peña Flamenca de Seattle: Fiesta Navideña 2007

This was the big winter Peña show--and the culmination of a flurry of year end engagements and performances. And big it was--two roughly forty-five minute sets replete with meaty dance and cante numbers over two nights. Ouf!

But it was also heaps of fun (as these things are wont to be). And a bit (read: lots) less stressful than my small group performances: all those bodies on the stage makes one feel a bit less "exposed." (As if vegetables and other foodstuffs of questionable freshness might come flying over the footlights.) Perhaps this is also why I rather like being at the back of the stage. Odd thing, that, for someone who sets out to do something as inherently exhibitionist as public performance. Go figure.

In any case, both nights went off pretty much as well as I had hoped. No major train wrecks, no produce thrown. I wasn't even suffering from the caprices of my peripheral nervous system all that much. I'm not sure if that was due to my having learned to calm down as a performer, or to the flask of good German schnapps circulating backstage before the curtain went up. I'll keep you posted on any future discoveries (although, honestly, if the formula works, I'm loathe to tinker with it).

But enough blather. How about a video? Here is the first installment of the Bamberas, one of the longer numbers we worked up for this show. You can see parts 2 and 3 by following the links that come up when this section finishes (it's a long beastie). If the window gives you any hassles, you can also check out the videos directly on the Peña's YouTube channel.

I'll post more clips (and likely some more blather) as the videos go up. You'd think this would be a faster process, wouldn't you?

~A.