Flamenco!!

Written by Wifey.

:-p So, technically, it was Hubby's date night. Except, Hubby didn't know quite what he wanted to do, and I'd had this coupon from LA Weekly's Voice for awhile. So... it was kinda more my date night. Anyhows, for date night we headed over to the El Cid for an evening of dinner, drinks, and Flamenco! (try to say Flamenco without putting an exclamation point at the end... kinda hard! It's one of those words that you just need to say with a flourish... fllaaamenco!). The show starts at 8pm, and they recommend coming earlier so you can have time for a nice leisurely dinner. Of course, Hubby and I rarely run on time, so we ended up getting there just a few minutes before the show started. Not a big deal, still got our meal, but it was hard to focus on eating while the stage captured our attention.

So, if you've never seen a Flamenco! show, you should definitely check it out. We had no idea what we were in for... just knew that it was a Spanish thing, and there'd be food & music & dancing. So, now that we've seen the show, I can tell you exactly what Flamenco! is. Sorta. From what we figured out (and later read on Wiki, lol), Flamenco! isn't just about the dance, but also about the guitar music & the singer. It takes years to learn the steps, but according to the dancers, during the actual performance there's quite a bit of improv. I think that was one of my favorite parts of the show - you could actually see the dancers looking at each other in impressed surprise when a dancer took her turn. It felt more organic then a perfectly synchronized show. The singer and guitarist would start up, and then one of the dancers would jump up, and start stomping and twirling and wiggling away, before eventually leaving the center stage so another dancer could take her turn. There was an awful lot of stomping, kinda like a tap dance, so there was always a good beat to enjoy. So yeah, very interesting experience! And now... we know about Flamenco!

On a side note... if you're a guy who appreciates the female form, then this show is perfect, cuz there was a lot of bum action!! Very form fitting skirts, lol. myself, I was more distracted by the VPL on one of the girls. ;-)