By Jose Gonzalez
University of Maryland students and faculty gathered on Thursday at St. Mary’s Hall to learn about flamenco, an art form fusing dance and music originating in Andalusia, a region in southern Spain.
UMD’s College of Arts and Humanities and the School of Language, Literatures and Culture invited TorcuArt, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting classical flamenco and Spanish cultures, to perform in the building’s multipurpose room.
“It is a combination of the history of the musical genre,” said professor and head of the Department of Spanish, Manel Lacorte. “They combine short explanations about the history and the main characteristics of this kind of music that is connected to.”
Paul Villmoare, a TorcuArt advisory board member and guitarist who has been performing for 35 years, created slideshows , detailing the history of flamenco. Fellow advisory board members Estela Vélez, a dancer, and singer Alma Rodríguez joined Villamoare, a teacher at the Bryn Mawr School in Baltimore. .
Flamenco fuses three musical elements: cante (song), toque (guitar and musicianship) and baile (dance). The art form has been influenced by multiple Mediterranean cultures spanning more than a millennium.
“Flamenco is coming from the merge of three cultures, so the Jewish, the Christians and the Muslims,” president of TorcuArt Manuel Sanchez said. “Flamenco is a result of the coexistence and collaboration of three different cultures.”
Aula de Flamenco is part of a series of performances showcasing the Andalusian art form. It has been showcased at other colleges like the University of Maryland Baltimore County, Georgetown University and Loyola University Maryland.
According to Sanchez, the performances are supported with the help of the Paco de Lucía Foundation, a cultural organization dedicated to the Spanish flamenco guitarist of the same name.
“We started this program three years ago, and we thought that it was interesting for people to know the history of flamenco, and we started offering that to community centers, high schools and universities,” Sanchez said. “We go to a very large number of places and just explain the history of flamenco. We thought that it was interesting because most people know flamenco as an art.”
Lacorte added that the event was held to help Spanish-speaking students better understand the culture of Spanish music.
“[UMD has] students from all over the Spanish-speaking world,” Lacorte said. “Everybody has different experiences with Spanish. So we try to capture them or to expose them to music from Spain, music from El Salvador, music from South America. … So we organize as many events as possible, so students learn not only through what they do in the classroom, but also through these kinds of events.”
Featured Image: Flamenco dancer dances at Torcuart’s Aula De Flamenco. Photo by Julian Feurer.