#3 in a series:
Supporting flamenco in your community
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Wouldn't it be great to be able to see flamenco anytime or every hour on the hour? Yeah right...dream on.
I can only speak for myself and perhaps some of the non-Spanish flamencos here in Washington DC will probably agree with me when I say that what we do is pretty good entertainment, pretty good for non-Spaniards, but not real flamenco as we see demonstrated by the few local and visiting professional Spanish flamenco artists who pass through New York and Washington DC every year.
So with regards to the restaurant/club variety of flamenco, it boils down to money: sure, it's good entertainment, it makes people happy but unfortunately flamenco does not have a wide appeal--or so say the restaurant and club owners. Let's face it...people love flamenco, but it just doesn't sell as well as a live band that plays danceable music.
How do we as responsible flamenco citizens in the Nation's capitol (of the USA) go about supporting flamenco in DC?
Well for starters, just go out and see every flamenco show you can. Sounds like a pretty expensive request on my part, doesn't it? Well we can all be artístes and refuse to give what the people want--whatever that is, but then we still have to consider that restaurants and clubs are in the business to make money and what we have to do to go on presenting our art in these establishments is demonstrate to the business community that flamenco can be profitable. How?
Say for instance you visit a friend performing in a local club or restaurant:
- Don't just sit there and watch the show, spend some money! Order a couple of drinks or better yet buy dinner.
- Take it one step further and be sure that the club owner or manager knows that you came to his or her restaurant primarily because of the flamenco show,
- and more importantly, tell the owner that you will come back again and bring friends.
Hopefully the show you're seeing is geniunely entertaining even if the performer isn't at his best on a particular night. We all have our fair share of bad nights...so don't assume that because a show is bad this time, that it's like that all the time.
I want to thank you all in advance for coming to my local shows. Find out where I'm performing and also where the other equally entertaining shows are by visiting my calendar page:
Let's go see some flamenco!
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