Anda Flamenco News

Anda Flamenco Company and School Presents the Extravagant "Festival 10" on February 11, 2012, at 3pm and 6pm at the Czech Hall in St. Paul

This promises to be a truly memorable show in a fabulous historic venue! Both the company and the school have been working on these exciting new choreographies for over two years, polishing and refining them before presenting them to you!

This year we're trying something different - a cabaret-style show! Feel free to leave your seat for a better view of a particular dance, to stretch your legs, or to enjoy a tapa and a glass of wine or lemonade.

The Czech theater CSPS Hall is locatedat 383 Michigan Street, 55102. It is above the Glockenspiel Cafe (with an elevator), and is one block east of St. Clair on W 7th in St Paul. There is plenty of on street parking, and the theater is handicapped-accessible if you enter at the door in the parking lot beside the building.

Tickets will be $15 for adults and $12.50 for students and seniors, and this price includes a tapa or a beverage. Kids under 12 are free!!

SEE YOU ON FEBRUARY 11!

Anda Flamenco Appears at Conga Latin Bistro February 23, 2012

Anda Flamenco presents "Open Stage: Flamenco Revealed!" on various Thursdays from 7-9pm (Spanish time, of course...) at Conga Latin Bistro, located at 501 East Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis. It's usually (but not always) scheduled on the second Thursday of the month so stay tuned to our website for current dates. Hosted by Kristina de Sacramento and Anda guitarist Michael Ziegahn, the ever-changing array of dancers includes members of Anda Flamenco Company, members of the street company Las Zapatistas, students from Anda Flamenco's School, and guest artists from both in and out-of-town.

We chose the name "Flamenco Revealed" because the nature of our "Open Stage" is just that. Since the dancers have no chance to extensively rehearse their numbers with the guitarists, the audience gets a rare chance to see "behind-the-scenes secrets" of how flamenco comes together when it's improvised at a juerga in Granada or a peña in Jerez (or at a bar in Minnesota)!

And, A VERY IMPORTANT FYI - make sure the hostess at Conga Latin Bistro seats you so you'll have a waiter to help you take advantage of the happy hour two-for-one drinks that are served until 8pm.  

What's New at Anda School For Winter of 2012

Anda is teaching another 6-week Beginning Technique Workshop from 6:00 - 7:00 pm on Mondays, Januray 2 - February 6. Come prepared to work out your brains as well as your feet, arms, and backs, since exercises change each week! Our community favorite - an 4-week All-Levels Sevillanas Workshop for singles or couples will return from 7 - 8 Mondays January 9 - January 30. We also have an ongoing Intro 1 Class on Tuesdays from 6:00 to 7:00 pm, January 3 - February 7. For pricing information, click on Dance Classes in the Quick Links sidebar on the left of this page.
 

Click Here For Our Weekly Flamenco Webcast!

Stay connected! Log onto Poquito y Bueno every Thursday for a new show of flamenco music, news and interviews at: http://www.kfai.org/poquitoybueno

"Poquito y Bueno," our half-hour weekly worldwide flamenco webcast, premiered in April 2009 on KFAI, Fresh Air Radio. One of the oldest alternative radio stations in the country, KFAI began web-only programming and chose Poquito y Bueno as one of the two web casts to pioneer this programming decision. Shortly after our premiere were invited to link with Jerez Jondo, a real honor! Just recently, we were interviewed live on Canal Sur Radio from España! They were curious to know about flamenco in Minnesota!
 

Las Zapatistas "Hit-and-Run" Bellaluna Boutique and a Special Graduation Party for Opening of 2011 Season

The Zap's first 2011 zapping was May 2, a late start do to a non-existant spring! The weather broke just in time for them to add to the festivities at former student Satail Tailin's delightful Bellaluna Boutique, where they were then treated to amazing and much needed neck massages by resident myotherapist Shawn Gardener. From there, the Zaps continued onto the graduation and job-found celebration of another former student, Tracy Leask Teyssier. Arriving during a lull in the party, Tracy's French husband Christian went into the house and reappeared in the front yard moments later with 8 chairs, 8 wine glasses, 5 huge hunks of fabulous European cheeses, a plate of hams and salami, and a basket of freshly sliced sourdough bread. The Zaps fell upon this fare like a horde of hungry fire ants, fortifying themselves enough to dance in the middle of the street, stopping traffic and entertaining the neighborhood. (Note the secret of their success in the picture below: remote-controlled Zaps Pilar and Satail perform at a rally under the command of controller Kristina de Sacramento!)

Vicente Griego Taught Cante at Anda Studios in December 2010

Thanks to a serendipitous chain of events that greatly benefitted the Minnesota flamenco community, the mesmerizing flamenco singer Vicente Griego arrived from New Mexico just in time to ruin his gorgeous leather loafers in the snowstorm of the decade while singing his heart out for local schools and at workshops at Anda, having to cancel other workshops and performances due to the blizzard. At Anda, Vicente taught La Caña, a palo that Anda's advanced dance students are currently studying for Festival 10, which is slated to premier in February of 2012. Vicente mesmerized the class for two hours, not only by teaching cante but also by sharing personal and historical artistic stories as well as offering performance advice. Long after we reluctantly sent him downstairs to catch his ride back to our sister city of St. Paul, we talked about the aura of generosity that he added to our studio's juju!
 

Anda Flamenco Performed "The Kitchen Sink" with the Seward Concert Band on November 6, 2010

Anda Flamenco Company's dancers and guitarist provided the "Carmen Aire" for the Spanish music section of the Seward Concert Band's November 6th concert presented at 7:30pm at Roosevelt High School Auditorium in Minneapolis. The acclaimed Seward Concert Band, directed by the visionary Christina Chen-Beyers, featured Anda's latest choreographic collaboration with Magdalena of NYC, "Fandangos de Picadillo," which translates as "Fandangos and the Kitchen Sink." Chen-Beyers created a rare opportunity to fuse music and dance in an intimate community setting. The segue from flamenco concert music to flamenco dance back to flamenco concert music was ideal, since our cameo piece was designed to take Minnesotans from a gentle flamenco folk dance through exciting flamenco footwork to an American notion of Spanish dance (ala Carmen) back to that gentle flamenco folk. Now our flamenco folk sandwich got dipped in a Carmen concert band batter - I think we had the Spanish version of a Monte Christo! Wow, and Christina is going to incorporated all that into a Seward Band Concert, and for her we say "Olé con Olé!"
 

Anda Flamenco on You Tube

Check out our latest videos on You Tube, including a recent rehearsal for Festival 9 and the little girls learning sevillanas with castanets. Just go to http://www.youtube.com and type in "anda flamenco."

Kristina Brings Flamenco to Children in Local Hospitals and at the Ronald McDonald House

Kristina is fortunate to be working with Breanna's Gift, a non-profit organization that brings the healing energy of the arts to children thrown into a hospital environment - whether they are the actual patients or the siblings of the patients. Anda Flamenco and The Zapatistas have a long-standing tradition of volunteering performances to raise funds for organizations like Rainbow Families, the Lupus Foundation, and Casa de Esperanza, to name just a few. Kristina is thrilled to take on the recent challenge of developing a method of teaching rhythmic dance to children restricted by wheelchairs or tethered to IVs.
 

Anda Flamenco will premiere "Señora Butterfly: A Flamenco Comedy" in 2012, really, truly...

Luck was with Anda on the night of the 2009 Fringe lottery: our show, Señora Butterfly landed a place in the August Fringe Festival! We had our theater assigned, we had our performance times and dates ready to publish, we had our story and our scenes written, we had our guest artists making plans for their plane tickets, we were busy picking out kimonos and developing choreographies and then - we discovered that Japanese/flamenco fusion music did not yet exist! That put us in the deliciously ironic position of creating it ourselves (here in Minnesota...), but that wasn't going to happen with the refinement our production deserves in the time we had left before our production opened. So we sadly but wisely gave our slot in the Fringe to another deserving production that had been languishing hopefully on the wait-list. We'd planned to produce Butterfly in 2010 at the Fringe. But Lady Luck of the Lottery was not with us and we scored 212 on the waiting list! (There's only 150 spaces available for shows...) Then we really, truly knew we'd score a place in the 2011 lottery, but once again we were miles down the waiting list! If we don' land a place in the 2012 lottery, we're going to need a fairy godmother to finance us or this great piece may end up being stillborn... Our story will center around Señora Butterfly (Cho Cho San), the post-menopausal ringleader of a group of Spanish ladies who are obsessed with being geishas. Late one night, Cho Cho and the ladies stumble upon a handsome, unconscious Japanese sailor who has washed up on a Spanish beach, and the flamenco comedy unfolds!