Veranos Flamencos!

Hi all! In case you don't know me personally, my name is Genevieve Obregon. I am a lifelong student of flamenco and it is one of my greatest passions.

I am currently on a flamenco pilgrimage, if you will, and wanted to share my journey for anyone else who may be considering taking the leap to study abroad in the birth place of flamenco.

My goal with this flamenco-blog is to share my experience while addressing any questions curious aficionados may have (so please let me know in the comments if you have any questions).

I also will be uploading some brief lessons intermittently for my local students to enjoy some technical gems I am picking up over here, so if you're interested in that, please subscribe to my website. The first lesson will be up some time later today, so tune in this evening CST.

Now onto business!!!

Veranos Flamencos is a summer program that is run by maestros Alfonso Losa and Maria Juncal. The program typically spans the full month of August and is held at the legendary Amor de Dios studios in Madrid, Espana.

In general, the scheduling allows for 90 daily minutes of class each with Losa and Juncal who provide a combination of tecnica de pies y cuerpo and choreography in a chosen palo that changes each week.

In addition to the Veranos maestros, there is a rotating guest maestro. This year the guest teacher changes every two days. Thus far we have had the luck to be inspired by Ruben Olmo (of the Ballet Nacional de Espana) and Concha Jareno (a legend and, in my eyes, the Queen of the Guajiras).

The guest teachers instruct a palo of their choosing and work with each level for 60 minutes. Speaking of levels, Veranos provides three levels to allow a perfect learning environment for most students (there is a low-intermediate level, a high-intermediate level, and an advanced level). This year I enrolled in the Advanced class and... let me tell you! It is QUITE the challenge, however, feet be damned, I'm NOT giving up!

On that note, I need to get to studying the videos from today's classes so I can rehearse on my own later, but before I go, I want to share something Ruben Olmo said to us --

After his final class with us on Tuesday afternoon, he said (I'm paraphrasing) that we could take classes all day, but also there is a time to study on our own and find our own voices and styles. After learning pasos (steps) with our instructors we need to digest the material, work on it, and present it in way that it becomes our own -- something that we learned from so-and-so, but that is done in our own unique way. And I love that!

We do not need to be little replicas of one another in flamenco, in fact is is much more interesting when we each take the liberty to be ourselves. We can use flamenco as a medium to find our own voices and develop our own uniquely beautiful styles! So let's get out there and work on it!