Flamenco Fiesta in Solsona: Small Town Summer Fun

On Saturday night,  Andrés and I spent the evening in a town called Solsona in Lleida, the province next to Barcelona, and checked out their Flamenco festival. Flamenco is actually a dance from Sevilla, but for some reason they had dances going on much closer to us! The dancers were all young girls, probably about 14 or 16 years old and were dressed in bright pink and black dresses. The best part about summer parties in Spain is that they always have terrace seating and outdoor bars where you can have a lovely glass of wine and a few tapas.

 Now, of course, I will make it to Sevilla at some point to check out the original dance, but in the meanwhile, here are a few fun facts I found on Seville Traveller's blog. I'd recommend following the link if you plan to visit Sevilla:

• The dance is a 300 year old activity meant to be passionate, loud and sensual - yup, sounds like an accurate description of Spain to me :)
• Flamenco was originally performed by gypsies
• Flamenco is based on improvisation, and originally there weren't even any rules for the music or dance  - hmm, again, sounds like Spain to me :)
• There are many, many styles, as the flamenco was usually performed by peasants and at family parties
• A flamenco variety is called a palo - literally, a stick - and there are 50 varieties

Flamenco in Solsana - excuse the badly lit, blurry, taken while drunk mobile pic!

Solsana - a cute little town -  PHOTO CREDIT: solsana tourism page

Travel plans are on the horizon - as are a lot of studying plans :)  My PhD plan is taking shape and I'm going to be working furiously until mid-July to finish designing my test instruments, pilot them on a dozen American students, write my first year's official progress report, present it to the board, make necessary changes, and analyse pilot data before finalizing my design. Thankfully, I only teach English until the end of June. Happy summer - stay tuned for travel adventures ahead!!!