Flamenco on fire
Gypsy rhythms reignite in Bay Area

Cicero A. Estrella, Chronicle Staff Writer

The Spanish art form has a rich history in the Bay Area, hitting its peak in popularity during the 1950s and early '60s. San Francisco's North Beach was the hot spot, with venues such as the Old Spaghetti Factory, La Bodega and Casa Madrid cultivating local talents as well as imports from Spain. But the cultural revolution of the late '60s changed the city's landscape. The bohemian center moved from North Beach to the Haight and forged the slow decline of flamenco's popularity.

Flamenco Fever
The smoldering dance reflects our hunger to feel powerful emotions
BY ANN MURPHY

Still, flamenco is about more than a struggle with improvisation or a debate about artistic purity. It demands the depiction of a full range of qualities we call masculine and feminine. In the '40s and '50s, the great dancer Carmen Amaya (no relation to Juana) performed the lively allegrias (a joyful dance) in pants, adding percussive brilliance and jumps as no woman before her had done. In flamenco today, women can be as tough as toreadors. "I think there's a lot of duality in the women's role. It's very masculine and feminine," Yaelisa says. "In Spain, women still have to watch what they say, but onstage they are free." To get there you'll need a mantón, some black flamenco shoes, a flounced skirt, and a whole lot of soul.

New stars in Caminos Flamencos
Rachel Howard, Special to The Chronicle

A Caminos Flamencos performance brings several guarantees: virtuosic music, striking lighting and a closing tour-de-force solo by artistic director Yaelisa to draw shouts of "olé!"

The sassy, mono-monikered Yaelisa is one of her form's most prolific local proponents and the founder of the New World Flamenco Festival in Irvine. But she's also spent her last 14 years in the flamenco-crazy Bay Area training a new generation of dancers. And in the company's latest show, which played the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater over the weekend and repeats at San Jose's Mexican Heritage Plaza on Thursday, she hands the spotlight to a protege of dazzlingly soulful maturity.

Club helps put flamenco in the spotlight
Harriet Chiang, Chronicle Staff Writer

Owner Cathrine Diaz teamed with her husband, Eddie, to transform what had been a beauty salon at the back of the restaurant into a club and an East Bay showcase for flamenco, which has been going through a resurgence in San Francisco and San Jose in recent years.

"We're trying to open a new venue of flamenco in Newark,'' said Eddie Diaz, director of the Flamenco Society, a San Jose nonprofit devoted to promoting the flamenco culture in the Bay Area. "Every time the Flamenco Society has done performances in this area there has been a lot of demand from those who don't want to go to San Francisco or San Jose.''

Miño Family revels in flamenco

SPANISH TROUPE BRINGS ARTISTRY TO BAY AREA

By Nora Villagrán

Mercury News


Flamenco is more than a style of dance and music -- it is duende, a passion that inflames artist and audience.

``You can feel duende in the whole theater,'' says Eddie Diaz, artistic director of the Flamenco Society of San Jose. ``Even if you happen to just walk in.''

On May 27, the Flamenco Society of San Jose presents the Miño Family from Spain in ``Flamenco en Concierto'' at Villa Montalvo's Carriage House in Saratoga.

Flamenco at the Crossroads
How the Bay Area scene found its roots
Carl Nagin

Friday, February 22, 2008

About an hour south of Sevilla in a rural Spanish pueblo called Morón de la Frontera are the remains of a Moorish citadel, a cathedral and a rather gawky monument to a gamecock. Little else there attracts outsiders, unless you happen to be a fan of traditional Gypsy flamenco. For nearly five decades, Morón has been a flamenco mecca for a group of devoted Northern California performers and aficionados, whose musical pilgrimage has helped establish the Bay Area as one of the most active flamenco scenes outside of Spain, and, in turn, helped disseminate one of the art form's most original guitar styles, toque de Morón.