Playing for dancers
In summary, the traditional
steps to learn how to successfully accompany are these:
1
Find a guitar teacher who accompanies dancers and learn some
basic rhythm chord sequences of the main dance forms. This
usually involves regular and ongoing private lessons.
2
Sit with this guitarist as he plays in classes and at dance
rehearsals. The main guitarist usually uses an amplifier so the
student can practice quietly in the background with muffled
strings. Recording lessons and classes is also useful.
3
The student provides simple accompaniment as second guitarist
in dance classes. He will also play on his own for beginners
classes and plays basic rhythms sequences to things like
Sevillanas, Soleá and Alegria.
4
The student sits with the main guitarist on stage and supplies
basic second guitar rhythm accompaniment.
5
The student plays on his own in more classes and rehearses with
students and goes into the field doing performances in cafes,
private parties and other gigs. Eventually he is called upon to
play on his own in more advanced dance classes and to create
suitable music for dance choreographies
6
Through this process, he learns as much as he can from
recordings, books and videos. The best CDs to learn
accompaniment from is those that highlight singers and also
those that feature live dance performances where the steps are
audible. I shamelessly say "he" rather than the more
politically correct "he or she" because I have only met two
female flamenco guitarists in my life. Both of these preferred
to remain low key regarding performances. To my knowledge
female guitarists are rare even in Spain.
All this could take about a year, but it is a most satisfying
experience and you end up walking away with all you need to
arrange half decent dance accompaniments in the privacy of your
own home with no dancers in sight. But even so, the results
will still need to be tested, and usually further customized to
suit the individual dancer. Serious dancers don't usually dance
to "off the shelf" music. This may happen in some dance schools
that use tapes and CDs in class, but I would not send anyone to
learn dance in one of these schools.
Most "serious" dancers prefer to
play a part in it's development.
I probably haven't helped you
that much. I just wanted to emphasize that fact that flamenco
is about interaction with others. You can't do it on your own.
I dare say that anyone who has been actively involved in
performing flamenco will tell you the same thing. Despite what
I say, my hope is that you will go ahead and create some
arrangements anyway and try them out with dancers. The bottom
line is that music and dance are personal expressions that need
not be necessarily limited to traditional rules. I worked with
one dancer who had a background in modern jazz style dance. She
liked to freely improvise flamenco steps without any regard to
specific compás. That was fine by me. We both knew the "rules"
but for a bit of fun, we sometimes made a conscious decision to
disregard them. In other words, I could play any style of music
(classical, ragtime or whatever) and she was happy to dance to
it. That was kind of liberating but we both knew it wasn't
flamenco. We just enjoyed what we did.
With kind regards,
Sal Bonavita
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