Sevillanas

Today, we had a gay parade known as "Pride Parade" in San Francisco.
I went to Castro area with my friends last night. It was already crazy even a day prior! At the last bar, my friends said "I guess you are the only straight woman in this bar". maybe I was! : )
Most people were celebrating "NY's approval of same sex marriage". We were dancing and singing. It was fun! I was thinking if this was in southern part of Spain, people were dancing Sevillanas!?

I guess almost everybody learning flamenco knows and can dance Sevillanas. 日本語では、セビジャーナスとかセビヤーナスとかと訳されてるよう。
I heard that everybody starts learning Sevillanas in Japan. They sometimes study it for a year!! I think since this dance has almost no typical flamenco footwork, it is good for beginners to start with.
Sevillanas is danced by pairs or groups of people and is performed at fiestas of all kinds throughout Spain like weddings or parties and has 4 separate parts, #1~#4. Each one takes only one minutes or shorter depending on speed of music. #1 and #2 are very easy and #3 and #4 are bit complicated.

This reminds me BON ODORI (Japanese summer dance). We do not learn how to dance BON ODORI but we can dance it somehow because we learn simply by being constantly surrounded by it.

I've been learning flamenco for a while but, I have never learned it till the last performance!!!!!!! そんな奴が存在するのかというくらい、珍しいことだと思う。。。
I had many opportunities to learn Sevillanas but I took one lesson then stopped going, on and off......so I never learned the entire dance.
I was not going to dance it at the last performance but my teacher has changed her mind one week prior! Yes, she told me that I had to dance!!
I was almost panicked...Fortunately, my teacher was teaching Sevillanas #4 for beginner students so I joined just to learn it and my classmate taught me #1~#3 for one hour. Yes, I only had two hours to learn all of it. After that, I practiced every night with YouTube. Thank you, YOUTUBE!!!
My Sevillanas is still rough but I can make it though because we don't need to dance the same way although there is a basic rule.

This is my favorite Sevillanas video. The music sounds very melancholic than traditional one and they elegantly dance like ballet. Please watch til the end. It takes only 4 mins.

I need to dance Sevillanas in Aug again so I want to find my Sevillanas style till then!

OLE!