Flamenco

My morning was really uneventful today but, after reading profile after profile at work, I experienced a piece of the culture here at Spain.  For dinner my friends and I went to Chinatown.  The food is cheap and good and it helps that my one of my friends is from China.  I ordered fried shrimp noodles and it was amazing.  There were different vegetables mixed in with it.

After dinner, my friend Lena and I went to see the traditional Spanish dance, Flamenco at a small cafe in the Northern part of the center of the city.  We waited for an hour in this little cafe.  There was no room to move in the room.  We were given two drink tickets so we enjoyed the night with some glasses of sangria.

In Flamenco, there is a singer, a guitarist and the male and female dancers.  The guitarist was spectacular.  His fingers moved so eloquently and smoothly across the strings, moving his fingers on the guitar in a way I had never seen before.  The singer bellowed his songs in Spanish and put so much emotion into them.

The dancers each had their own dance solos but I liked it more when they danced together.  They danced in sync but they never touched.  Flamenco is very rhythmic and regal.  They express so much emotion in their faces while keeping a steady rhythm.  They do a lot of foot work and at one point the man was dancing only on his heels.  When the woman danced, she incorporated the bottom of her dress into her dance.  It was simply amazing.