MUSIC AND ECSTASY FROM FLAMENCO PITTSBURGH

by Danny Mckaveney

I don’t get sick often.

Looking back, I can tell I was destined to be ill by how tired I was on the afternoon of yesterday, the tenth of October. It didn’t make sense in the moment; I was sitting in some classroom (I am a much belated undergraduate student) unable to think or focus, all my will to recollect having been destroyed within the span of thirty minutes. Because I had slept a full, deep night, I figured this distractibility was due to my having been bored.

I went home from class and napped. It was at my liberty, and thankfully so, because I needed it—though I only stole an hour of the night away. And when I woke up I was, in fact, more tired than before I’d begun, but I managed my way out of bed, readied, then rushed to the inbound 54 bus, sun falling.

I prefer to be a pedant, I suppose, and am upset I must skip over details. There are many I have excluded, such as how I brushed my teeth, and what I thought about the way I cleaned my gums with hurried brushes. About what I thought when I put on my new, black jacket from the superstore, or of the tickle in my throat, et cetera, et cetera.

And yes, there was the yet innocuous tickle, nestled in my larynx. It accompanied me, camouflaged through my bus ride, and served as my fuzzy acquaintance as I idled in the Strip District before the show, inhaling chicken tikka masala at Salem’s before I dallied on, made way to attend Flamenco Pittsburgh’s Gala Debut at the Pittsburgh Winery.

. . .

I decided to attend the Gala alone, despite having the option to bring a guest, a friend, anybody. I suppose I thought I’d be better able to write about it, the dancing, the music, rather than write about the hypothetical night I would share with a friend, one who would have certainly seemed to me to have been a distraction, someone to entertain and ensure enjoyed the culture, et cetera. It would have changed the character of things, in other words, and so I went alone.

I regretted the solo aspect of this endeavour as I exchanged with the man at the ticket booth, but whatever, it was too late, and so ten minutes to showtime, I descended the steps into the cellar, a room which opened dramatically:

How do I put it—the venue was phenomenal, a space with tremendous, exposed wood beams and boards in every direction, two bars, tables stretched out . . . a layout fit to host feasts, with the stage posted on the beside, a dozen-plus wood kegs behind as backdrop, burnt with the Pittsburgh Winery logo, a graphic designed as an apt castle . . . it fit the majesty of the setting, with its moody, coloured lighting, VIP seating . . . and I felt immediately that I must sit down to blend in, to cease my gawking, and after surveying the room, which expanded into unexpected directions under the city terrain, I took a seat at the nearest empty table. It was a high table, bar stools, right behind the sound booth where an indifferent man fumbled around with his smartphone, looking at video reels.

For an instant, I was worried I had arrived too late. It’s not clear why this was a stress at this point now, the point at which I write two days later, the twelve of October. I think I initially desired closer seats, but as I watched the soundman fiddle on his phone, loafing and swiping on his device, my anxiety settled, because I found his deportment perplexing.

The soundboard appeared as a space shuttle, with its many slick buttons and channels, and for anyone to so casually recline before that technology (which perhaps costs more than my car) is comparable to the nonchalance of airline pilots who, assuming a certain, moderated insanity, perform their duty with confidence.

I was infatuated. I took no notice of my little, budding throat-frog. I scanned the cellar as if we were all under this careless man’s stewardship, him protecting us under the auratic light, and I sought to familiarise myself with all the people populating the room, which soon began to fill out additionally from the side; a group of brightly adorned figures filed out from a door across the venue, opposite me, people I quickly recognised as the performers. As a line, they entered the stage from a ramp on stage-left, organising themselves into a line against the back wall, each before their spot, whether with microphone, or chair, or nothing at their side. Some had instruments, guitars, flutes, and some had percussion, which I think had already been laid out before their presentation—but who knows, maybe they carried everything out.

The room was consumed with chatter. The low ceilings amplified the horde of voices which stormed the cellar, and I stared; I began to pivot my gaze between the tall woman in the middle of the line of figures on stage—she stood upstage in passionate colours, patient before a microphone—and the lackadaisical man scrolling through portrait mode videos on social media. The array of musicians and dancers posed as if waiting for cue, and I straightened my back, as if by looking firmly at this soundman from above on my highstool, he would recognise the position of the moment: Show start.

My gaze must have notified him, or perhaps an instant message alerted him to the urgency of that instant, but the soundman bolted up, pressing a button on the left edge of the soundboard, which shot all the faders into position. Now standing, he dialed the board with one hand as he began to signal to the performers on stage that the night had begun.

. . .

Carolina Loyola-Garcia, artistic director of Flamenco Pittsburgh, is who introduced the show. She opened with a short statement of gratitude, discussing the occasion of Flamenco Pittsburgh’s new life as a nonprofit organisation. Flamenco Pittsburgh is a cultural organisation which has since 2002 worked to spread awareness and love for flamenco through educational outreach, classes, and performance. This Gala was a prelude to the first full season of Flamenco Pittsburgh’s programming as a nonprofit.

Loyola-Garcia kept it tight, saying she’d introduce everyone on stage as the night went on, and the night entered into its first number. I had no idea what to expect. Despite my having been planted in my seat for fifteen minutes, and having stared down the soundman from above his shoulder, peeping through his phone and professional paraphernalia, something was missing. The environment had an air of familiarity floating through it, much like a banquet, a festin, and there I was, alone, lonely on my high-stool—still! What I held close to me was the idea of the incoming dance, that’s something I could hold onto, but . . . it was just music.

Music! No dance! I, the cultured fool, began to wonder if I ever had a hint about what were flamenco, because shouldn’t there be immediate and constant dance? No? Had I walked into the wrong event? Absolutely not. I suppose I’m ignorant, I thought, I don’t even know what flamenco is, and I panicked: there would be no dance, none, and I’d be sitting on my stool here, forever, a clown!—having tricked himself into anticipation of flying bodies.

But I’ll admit—I like to walk into things blind. Books, films, and apparently flamenco, too . . . yes, blind . . . I walk into everything blind . . . I’m blind now, walking forward through this piece . . . yes . . . but the flute did take me away, it was soft and fluffy, took me to something out of Chick Corea’s Light as a Feature, and then . . . the guitars . . . two men wielded their guitars, both with fabulous sets of hands . . . I couldn’t even see the one man, one of those tremendous beams of wood was in the way, but you could hear how delicate were his hands . . . do you understand how tender you must be with each of your fretting fingers, do you realise how graceful one must be to work one’s life intelligently up and down a maple, basswood, whatever-wood neck, as did each of these men? And I cannot even begin to fathom how to strum like that . . . those men were animals, precise yet fully organic . . . machines of humanity . . . yet no machine . . .

Yes, there was music . . . excuse me and let me return . . . downward to reality . . . the percussive pocket, the whole of it . . .

Yes. The track ended somewhere. And soon began the next. And that, then, on the second number is when the dancers came out, a quadrangle of swirling dancers, including Loyola-Garcia, winding their way onto center stage, and I was saved from my private disaster by dance.

Ha! Yes!—and there is something strange about this all . . . I have never been in the room as a live group danced flamenco . . . I’m sure I’ve been peripherally exposed to the dance via videos and whatnot, but . . . there is something about dance which allows it, in a breathing room, to feel destined . . . that were the universe scrapped, then randomised in a reignite, this night would have to again come into being by nature of its necessity to material existence, as if this occasion were analogous to those objects of pure geometric inevitability, such as those perfect crystals swollen to the size of the magnanimous, all by call of the fundamentals of physics . . . and that is what Flamenco Pittsburgh achieved, with grand justification . . . arms sensuous, whirling, controlling that air in which they stirred . . . the synchronised pounding of heels upon the thick wooden stage . . . hops, skips, knocks . . . wrists tied invisibly to ankles, knees tied intimately to the flying strumming-wrists of the guitarists . . . all a unified signaling . . . a rhythm tying bodies to the faithful percussionist’s drums and the hands of witnesses . . . claps, yelps, so much comes from the bodies of all through this dance, and it is not beastial, not animalistic, but civil, what the civil should aspire to . . . graciously embodied, as is preordained, as is law . . . something triumphant in a sparkling cave, waiting to be discovered . . . and we, that night, had uncovered this art not even buried . . .

. . .

It’s the fruit so sweet to you, which was made sweet for you, by you, you who were made ready to receive that specific bliss, you who were made for that to be witnessed . . .

I sat there alone and my throat began to hum. It was just a group of women stomping in heels if we want to drop the poetics about it, women stomping and twirling their dresses, pulling them up over their calves once in a while . . . and then the music . . . just tones vibrated and scattered, speckled across some temporal canvas which stretches across a few minutes of time . . .

Just trying to balance out my ecstasy here, a bit . . . too much euphoria dulls the whole pot . . . but where’s the world at now . . . it’s Sunday, the thirteenth, and I’m still sick. I coughed so hard earlier I began crying, and I’ve slept quite much lately . . . a heroic amount, indeed . . . hmm . . . and looking back, I wasn’t alone . . . not there, there in that cellar . . .

It was me, me and my burgeoning cold. I was at my table and I could tell I festered with something as I scoped around, but I couldn’t leave, no . . .

. . .

I, the pedant, could go on all month, enumerating every detail of this occasion from memory. I wish somehow I could carve a hollow out of the day, enter into it, and stretch an instant into the length of fifty hours, so I could write a pristine 10,000+ words about this night.

Because what have I covered? Two of the eleven numbers from the performance? Well, let me try to do the rest of the night justice without abandoning the rest of my wordly obligations . . .

. . .

Flamenco Pittsburgh did a great job assembling their artists, many traveling from all around the country for the event. All the following artists joined into the ensemble performances throughout the night: Guitarists Jon Bañuelos and Mark Ferguson came from Tucson and Portland respectively, and each did a respectable job, their skill being reminiscent of Paco de Lucía’s from his interpretation of Joaquín Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez. Each held firm in the ensemble and played empassioned solos between the group performances; it is very difficult to solo as they did to a room. Dancer Alice Blumenfeld came from Cleveland and executed a demanding solo later in the show; it was also celebrated that this impressive performance was given only six months after the birth of her first child. Marija Temo from Milwaukee shared her powerful voice with us this night. I found it hypnotic that such velocity and control could come with great, unassuming mastery—she is a small woman with loud pipes. Jeffrey Berman held the rhythm down sturdy with his percussion, Erik Lawrence played both flute and saxophone for the evening, soloing in the first number, and the Flamenco Pittsburgh dancers brought the multidimensional life to the stage.

Those dancers, Abha Bais, Susan Englert, and Athicha Muthitacharoen, all helped close out the show with solos in the final ensemble performance, along with director Carolina Loyola Garcia, who had her own solos throughout the night.

Flamenco Pittsburgh has been functioning since 2002 and this Gala was a prelude to Flamenco Pittsburgh’s premier season as a nonprofit. In each of January, March, and May 2025, there will be stage performances featuring flamenco artists from around the United States, and workshops with live accompaniment with guest artists.