One, two, three, 4 — faucet your toe, stamp. Sounds simple sufficient doesn’t it? Properly, you additionally must make swish, creative arm actions whereas your heels drill into the ground.
That is our first flamenco lesson within the Barrio de San Miguel in Jerez, the place flamenco is a part of the material of on a regular basis life.
My accomplice Deri is doing many of the dancing whereas I study to clap in time. This nook of the world has turned clapping and finger-snapping into an artwork type — and it’s no simple job.
Dancing within the streets: Jerez is small however stuffed with wonders – and there are sherry bodegas to go to
Our instructor is Carlos Carbonell, nearly unacceptably good-looking and lithe. Extra vital, he’s endlessly affected person.
He has only a week (two hours a day) to show us the standard Jerez dance, the buleria. Ed Balls’s Strictly dance accomplice would sympathise.
On our first day, we go away Resort Villa Jerez — close to the Royal College of Equitation, Jerez’s world well-known driving academy — and head via the outdated city, previous the white-washed bodegas and the sherry cellars in the direction of the barrio of San Miguel.
Most bodegas sport acquainted names: Gonzalez Byass, Harvey, Garvey and Sandeman; the British have been guzzling sherry since Sir Francis Drake (‘el Pirata’ in these elements) started looting provides in Cadiz.
The native dance is the flamboyant buleria
Later, we go to the Tio Pepe bodega. It has barrels signed by Mrs Thatcher and Picasso, who each toured the premises.
Our information tells us Jerez produces not simply sherry, however brandy, wine and vinegar. ‘Our vinegar might be higher than most wines elsewhere in Europe,’ he boasts.
We trundle via outdated partitions and into medieval lanes lined with turrets, Arabic baths, former mosques and cathedrals. Jerez generally appears too small to comprise all its clamorous historical past — but it surely’s an exquisite vacation spot.
These streets have witnessed the likes of Christopher Columbus. One of many crew of his ship, the Santa Maria, was an area known as Rodrigo de Jerez, who has a unprecedented declare to fame — as the primary European smoker.
The district of San Miguel goes again to the fifteenth century.
Our vacation spot, El Chiqui dance college, is beside the attractive baroque Seventeenth-century church Capilla de la Yedra, the place the statue of Jesus is overshadowed by a a lot bigger statue of a flamenco dancer, Francisca Mendez Garrido.
With some trepidation, we head into the studio. Carlos is pleasant and welcoming.
We’re to study a buleria, the joyful flamenco dance native to Jerez. Flamenco has its justifiable share of loss and tragedy, however right here in Jerez the shape is fast-paced, raucous and raunchy.
The origins of flamenco stay obscure, however the extensively accepted rationalization is that, because the Christians moved in, the gypsies, Jews, Muslims and different assorted outcasts scarpered to the mountains.
Previous buddies: On the Tio Pepe bodega, there are barrels signed by Mrs Thatcher and Picasso
Right here within the furnace warmth of Andalucia, their cultures merged and from this completely happy coalition got here flamenco: singing, dancing, guitar enjoying, staccato clapping and finger-snapping.
Most nights, after classes, we do our homework in a flamenco bar, or tabanco, the place the seats go proper as much as the stage, the partitions plastered with photographs of former flamenco superstars, the performers ft away, the wine and sherry flowing freely.
Our favorite flamenco bar is Las Cuadras, within the Plaza de Asuncion. There aren’t any vacationers. Members of the viewers take it in turns to sing, play guitar or dance on the stone-flagged ground of the courtyard.
We come right here on our final night. It’s judgment time. We click on, stamp and faucet. There’s no pretence that we’re seasoned practioners, however after we end, there’s a hearty spherical of applause. I name {that a} consequence.
