La Tradición de Música y Baile Flamenco

Thursday, June 20: Today was a day filled with music. We met up a little later this morning for our first activity, so I used the extra time to search out Juan L. Cayuela's guitar luthier workshop/store that I had passed a few days ago on La Calle Zaragoza. This is a second generation luthier family. I was lucky to be able to play one of the family's hand-crafted classical guitars, my first opportunity to play in two weeks now since we left the States. I then met our group at a local flamenco dance studio where we had our first Flamenco lesson. I can't begin to describe how much fun it was. We focused on creating basic flamenco rhythms and extended those into our feet, hands and entire body movement. With only an hour+ of instruction, we were able to perform a pretty complex, but short module. So...much...fun! The Flamenco tradition of dance and gitano folk music is so strong that it fills the plazas and streets of Sevilla every evening.