Flamenco Dance

Flamenco Dance is fiery, exciting, loud, passionate and sensual. It is also incredibly atmospheric – even in a class setting.

It is an ancient art form, borne of traditional music and song, which inspired an improvised dance. To this day, lots of parts of it are improvised, although set routines now figure more and can therefore be learnt in a class, a step at a time.And the great news is you don’t have to be fit or flexible to greatly enjoy flamenco dance at a beginners level.

I’ve seen all ages, shapes and sizes of women do Flamenco Dance very effectively – there are no barriers here. Although, if you have two left feet, you might want to try improving your co-ordination in another dance class first. There’s a lot to think about in Flamenco Dance – including some complex counting patterns – and someone who is totally new to any type of dance may find all this a bit too hard.

Apart from that, it is suitable for any women who wants to dance a sensual, evocative, traditional dance.

And as long as you can co-ordinate your feet, the simple fandango routines you’ll learn at this level, if they are well taught, can come together very well and have real mood to them. It’s incredibly rewarding – and all in your first lesson.


The Class

The Flamenco Dance classes I’ve seen so far have tended to be on the small side. This is great for the enthusiastic learner. You’ll learn quickly and get lots of individual attention from your teacher.

Your teacher will probably aim to build a short, simple but effective routine out of basic steps for you to dance to music.A lot of the atmosphere of Flamenco Dance relies on the tap or stamp of the feet and the faster the better. But since true Flamenco is so fast, it is important that your teacher breaks down each step into its most basic parts – into each individual tap.

A good teacher will show you the very basic footwork and get you to practice it over and over again, perhaps slightly increasing the speed each time.

It may seem to be going too slowly at first, but if you don’t get these basics right, once the routine speeds up, your dancing will be a mess. So be patient and concentrate on each individual movement. And a good teacher will be giving Spanish translations too, which nicely completes the picture.

You’ll have to think a great deal in Flamenco Dance – there’s a lot the learn here. This isn’t a dance that you just follow along to with your brain switched off. Its roots are in authentic and improvised movements, shapes and expressions that just can’t be copied effectively if you are mentally planning what to have for dinner. To get the most out of this sensuous dance, you must give it your all.

Once you start learning a routine, for example, there’ll be more to think about than just doing all the individual steps in order. You’ll have to be aware that you may not be repeating exactly what you do on one foot on the other – there is not a great deal of symmetry in this dance – it is more flowing than that.

And the music is counted in six beats which takes a little getting used to if you’ve done other dance classes which are generally counted in 8 beats.There are a variety of counting patterns and beats in Flamenco Dance. Do be sure to know which one your teacher is using. The music is fabulous though – loud, jangly, hand clapping, toe tapping stuff.

At this point, you’ll probably add some hand claps to your routine when you first dance it to music – it’ll all come together very effectively if the teacher has kept the routine simple enough.

Another trick of a good Flamenco Dance class is to learn a variety of speeds within a routine – some fast and others slow. The slow sections act as a little rest for your brain and feet.

Once you’ve danced the routine with the feet steps and by hand clapping, you add in the arm movements. These are big sweeping circles and add the final authenticity to the routine. It always looks great when this happens and delights beginners who can feel that they have achieved an amazing look.

In some classes, once you are dancing the routine with feet and arm movements, the teacher will split everybody off into pairs so you can dance the routine with a partner. It’s so much more fun dancing with a partner. And it encourages you to dance to your very best when you know the person next to you is watching you carefully.

You’ll finish your class with a beautiful curtsey, which is really a thank you to your teacher. You’ll feel fantastic!


Clothes and Shoes

Clothes for the beginner in a Flamenco Dance class don’t matter too much, but here are a couple of guidelines.

Try to wear a top that gives your arms plenty of unrestricted movement.And don’t wear trousers that are very long in the leg as a tap or stamp on the floor needs to sound ‘clean’ and you can’t achieve this if you are treading on your hem.

Do give what you wear on your feet a bit of thought though, as sneakers aren’t great for this. Certainly they will protect your feet and legs when you are doing the stamps. But you won’t be able to make that distinctive tapping noise that is so satisfying. That noise is so much a part of what you are doing that it is almost pointless doing it without.

The other drawback of sneakers is that you are able to get away with too many mistakes because the teacher can’t hear a clear tap from them.

So try to wear a solid-soled shoe (not rubber). One that produces some sound when you walk on it. It doesn’t have to be deafening, just enough for you to hear it clearly. And smooth soles with enable you to turn easily too. You’ll really only ever enjoy this class with the right shoes on.

If you really get into your Flamenco Dance and want to go to your classes properly kitted out, then a pair of Character Shoes is what you're after. They look a little like tap shoes, only without the metal tap plates on the toe and heel. Have a look at some Character Shoes here.


Moves and Steps

Some beginners find picking up Flamenco Dance steps easy – others struggle at first. So don’t worry if it doesn’t all fall into place the first time – keep trying and soon it will.

The steps are done necessarily fast in order to get that distinctive Flamenco sound. So they need to be broken down as far as they will go – into individual taps of the foot – before you could ever have a chance of doing them quickly.

Make sure you’re taught and understand the individual components of each dance before trying them out at speed – and don’t despair if it doesn’t sound like Flamenco straight away. Far better to be able to do the dance accurately and slowly than get carried away but end up stomping your way through, out of sync with your fellow dancers. Yep, it’s a dance, like tap dancing, where your mistakes won’t just be seen, they’ll be heard!

So you’ll start by being shown how to stamp and tap your feet.You’ll have to get used to stamping when you are supposed to, but planting the foot to tap it.

That means that a stamp (correctly known as a ‘flat’) is where you quickly bring the foot down in contact with the floor, with the heel and toe landing on the floor at the same time to create one single loud stamping noise.

To plant a tap, you bring the either the heel or the toe down to the floor to make the sound but do not lift it again – it remains in contact with the floor.

And, in difference to learning Tap at this level, in Flamenco you’ll generally tap down with the toe first, rather than the heel. So a basic tap of the foot would be ‘toe heel’, not ‘heel toe’.

You’ll also have to differentiate between putting the two different parts of the foot down independently. That’s the heel and the toe(in fact 'toe' usually means the whole ball of the foot in any dancing where tapping is involved).

To help you do this, always keep you weight firmly over your hips so you can really get that contact with the floor. And make sure that your knees are soft – not ‘locked’ straight or you’ll jar your lower back and legs.

Try to see if you can figure out how to do this very simple, traditional foot step:-

Did you get it? You should have made a sequence of five sounds.

Toe taps down and stays on the ground.

Heel taps down.

Heel is lifted to tap down again.

Toe (which has remained in contact with the floor during the heel taps) is tapped

Whole foot is now in contact with floor, raise, and strike the ground with a flat.

See? Easy!

Once you’ve been introduced to the footwork, you will also start to add in beautiful, slow hand and arm movements. These tend to be wide, fluid circles. And then your teacher will perhaps complete the look for the routine with advice on simple head movements and positions.

Although you do need to concentrate, you’ll probably be surprised at how quickly the simple steps that you began with can be woven into a lovely evocative routine that will include variations in tempo, stamps, taps, a simple turn and all the finishing touches with hands, arms and head.