I am taking full advantage of my last days in Japan, and as that is the case, I don’t have much time to write and share my Japanese adventures with you at the moment. However, when I am back in Madrid, I’ll tell you all about my flamenco related experiences! I’ve already met Japanese flamencos, and it’s been an excellent experience.

For now, I would like to share a short video with you that appears on Flamenco.TV. By clicking here, you’ll be able to watch a little jota, the autochthonous dance of my beloved Aragón. Plus, the photo that you see to the left is one that I took of the jota being danced in the Procession of Flowers during the Fiesta del Pilar in Saragossa this past year.

I hope you enjoy this art form that is equally as Spanish as flamenco.

-Justine Bayod Espoz

Even though I have yet to meet any flamenco dancers or musicians (that I know of) in Japan, that doesn’t mean that the rest of you shouldn’t get to enjoy a little flamenco in my absence. I would like to remind my beloved madrileños (natives and non-natives) that Joaquín Cortés is performing Calé – a collection of the best pieces from the six shows that Cortés has choreographed and directed throughout his 20 year career – at the Nuevo Apolo Theatre, Plaza Tirso de Molina 1,until the 17th of January (the day I return from Japan).

The 11th of December, I had the pleasure of seeing Juan Manuel Mora, a young cantaor from Barcelona, at the Madrid tablao Las Tablas. Far from having that gravelly voice that has come to be expected of purist flamenco singers, Mora has a distinctly young and delicate voice, prettier than it is gut-wrentching, which is more or less appreciable depending on the audience’s mood and expectations.

I’d seen Mora before in the 2008 Flamenco Pa’ Tos galas, where he’d impressed me slightly more than at Las Tablas, probably because of the better sound system, lighting and space, which, like it or not, has a big influence on the audience’s experience, especially with an art form as intimate as flamenco and a show that consists of only two performers: singer and guitarist.

Happy New Year and hello from Japan! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Lola the Cow has embarked on a new adventure and crossed half the planet to report from flamenco’s home away from home.

According to an article in Dance Magazine, there are 80,000 flamenco students in Japan’s 600 dance schools and studios, a fact from which we can infer that flamenco is more than just a passing trend on this archipelago. In turn, the Spanish should accept a full blown cultural exchange and adopt and assimilate Kabuki. We’ll wait and see what happens.