We walk into pitch black edges with only silhouettes
of people and wine glasses and beer bottles on high
top tables. At the forefront of it all: a swirling flame of red
and black surrounded by an orange glow. The flamenco dancer.
Her hurried clogging against a weathered wooden stage echoes
and shouts like a raging thunder against the howling wind
of the impassioned, chanting vocals known as
la música de los gitanos.
The guitar strings are plucked faster and faster like an oncoming downpour
of rain, frenetic clapping and deep rumblings of a drum quickly following
following the flamenco’s swirling frame and frenzied jumping until
it stops.
Or so it seems.
There’s a soft tapping and snapping now, like whispers through the trees
as she appears to float mere inches above the stage, only the tips
of her toes transcending the space and tap tap tapping while the lithe
fingers above go softly snap snap snapping.
Not a single word is spoken. Not a single breath released.
And then the snapping turns to clapping. She descends from her feat,
the tapping becomes a stomping and the eye of the storm has passed
as flurry after flurry of the twirling flamenco skirt brings on another
riotous gust followed by the howl of the gitano as he cries for lust
and lost love. It’s all a cacophonous symphony of tragedy and rage
and obsession, on and on it goes, the fire of music and chanting and
stomping and clapping until the final throe
and her arms swoop in a finishing arc to come to a stop above her head
and at her waist, a punctuation to his last anguished cry.
There is silence. And then there’s whispering in the audience
that turns to waves of awe and swells into bursts of excitement.
A standing ovation.
Post Comment
Post a Comment