Studying Online From Prince George

When I moved to Prince George BC I knew that while I was moving to a beautiful place, flamenco classes did not exist. So I decided to offer classes myself. Through a well known dance studio I started to teach courses that were well received because they added a Spanish flair to Northern BC. I taught for 5 years.

I learned so much from teaching flamenco. First, I learned how to break down steps from a dance and explain it to my students. This helped me become more in tune with the music, compás and baile. Time with my students gave them appreciation for Spanish culture, the gitano world view and of course, the language. While fun students can also be challenging.
I had always been a flamenco student. Becoming a flamenco teacher pushed me into new levels of creativity and performance.

My development in flamenco, as a teacher, solidified my devotion to a style of flamenco that may be called “flamenco puro”. And so, I resisted the push from others to fuse the dance with the other dance styles merely to attract greater numbers of students. As a result, I stopped teaching.

My desire was to keep learning and started to look for online classes and found one. I began to enjoy being a student again. Yet, the amount of online classes were still quite limited.

Then the pandemic broke. In a matter of weeks, a lot of flamenco schools were offering their courses online. Wow! When I saw Al Mozaico offering zoom classes, I spoke with Kasandra and she welcomed me into her classes. I am happy with Kasandra´s curriculum! I feel that my dance has improved. My excitement for flamenco has never been greater and I feel completely integrated into a dance community … even though I participate in the class online!

In all of this You might say that I was socially distant since 2011, but became part of the flamenco community once again by way of the computer. I had learned to use the computer and had uploaded many videos, received feedback from instructors etc. The pandemic made this approach to learning flamenco a standard practice. I hope we never go back! The computer has given us great tools to learn and create a flamenco community!

VIVA FLAMENCO ONLINE!

Eileen Barrientos Carvajal