El Flamenco

Flamenco en Granada

On the last day before Thanksgiving break, the 7th graders had dance performances during their morning P.E. class. Our P.E. teacher had students work in groups of 3 or 4 to research a specific style of dance, choose a song, prepare a dance, and practice it to perform. I got to watch a few of these, and it seems like an amazing project.

Three girls researched and performed a flamenco dance. I really wanted to see it, but I was teaching 5th grade and just barely missed the girls' performance, and caught them as they were clicking and swishing to their next class (in very clicky heels and very swishy skirts.) They offered to perform for Spanish class that afternoon, which seemed like a great way to spend the last hour before break. (Not always a time for strenuous academic effort.)

I am envisioning future Spanish-P.E. collaborations on this type of a project, especially for native speakers who could write reports in Spanish, and offer demonstrations that are kinesthetic enough for even more basic levels to understand.

Sacromonte, Granada, where many caves in the hillside hold homes, shops, and famous flamenco performances.

I've used flamenco as a quick cultural lesson before, so it was a good thing to throw together at the last minute. The girls performed their dance, and explained what they knew about the history of flamenco. (They had to write a paper about the dance as part of the project, and as a result were able to teach me a few things!) We talked about the roles in traditional flamenco, the dialect in Andalucía (cantador vs. cantaor) and the cajón, which is also the name of a main road in San Diego and of a city nearby.

I showed them one of my favorite videos - Tengo, by Macaco. They compared (using these guided notes) what they knew about traditional flamenco with this modern video.

Other Flamenco resources:

• Notes:
• Flamenco en España - A presentation with with some images and examples of the elements of traditional flamenco. (All slides were created using images found via google search, so these images do not belong to me.)
• Videos:
• Flamenco en una cueva - A performance in one of the caves in Granada, which many consider the birthplace of the dance.
• Flamenco en la calle - Street performers in Granada. This includes the use of el cajón, and a surprise halfway through.
• Albanico mágico - A performance in San Francisco. This is a larger-scale interpretation of flamenco, using fans. (The video is 6 minutes long, so I usually let kids watch it if they are working on their own fans.)
• Bailando - Enrique's popular song includes lots of dance styles, including flamenco.
• Crafts: Los Albanicos

Depending how much time I am filling with this lesson (and whether or not the classroom is unbearably warm at the time) I have also used flamenco as a connection to the tradition of fans, in the dance and in Spanish culture. For teenagers, this is a chance to learn about the use of fans as communication in the pre-twitter, pre-texting era. For young students, this is a chance to practice the fine motor skills needed to fold fans. (They will need more help than you think.) For everyone, it's an excuse to fold paper fans and have a dance party.

This is a good end-of-the-day, end-of-the-week activity, since it generally leads to kids of all ages wiggling their eyebrows at each other over paper fans for the rest of the day. (And on more than one occasion I've had to save teachers' stacks of homework and worksheets from becoming fans, once young students get the hang of folding.)

•