Local Flamenco

Video Find of the Day

If you live in Seattle and spend a lot of time downtown, you probably spend it all on one or two avenues. That's been my observation down the years. When I was a teenager living on Beacon Hill, the bus from there to downtown ran up 4th then, and you caught it on 2nd to go home. So downtown was 4th and 2nd to me.

Now, I live in Pioneer Square and Real Change is in Belltown on 2nd, so my city is 2nd and 3rd Avenues. People for whom Seattle is 4th seem alien to me. Why would anyone go to 4th, I wonder. To me anything further east than 4th is beyond alien; it's the abode of the obscenely rich, or it's Capitol Hill.

Ana Montes teaches Flamenco dancing at her studio at 4th and Bell St, just a bit more than three blocks from Real Change, but I wouldn't know that because that's off the edge of my map. "There be dragons here."

Anyway, I went to the Northwest Folklife Festival tonight and tried to video the Flamenco shows. Montes and her students came out last, so naturally I had used up most of my recording time, because the preceding performances were great, too. I did manage to get a solo by her; we'll see if that's any good in a day or two, when I've had a chance to edit it.

Until then, here's someone else's video from Youtube that features not only her but some other performers I saw tonight. She dances right after the 4:30 mark.

Bulerias: Carmona Flamenco