Flamenco Is Moving to Larger Venues

With its wood-beamed ceiling, dim lights and brick walls plastered with posters of flamenco greats and 16th century heraldry, El Cid remains-after 40 years-the flagship of Los Angeles’ flamenco club scene. Five nights a week the restaurant’s lead dancer, Angelita, shuffles across the faux-villa wood stage, a pained expression on her face, her petite body engulfed in ruffles of black silk and red lace.

Flamenco may be hotter than it’s ever been in Los Angeles. By many counts the annual number of professional performances here has doubled in the last decade. But for restaurants like El Cid, which rely heavily on flamenco’s popularity, the rising tide doesn’t seem to be lifting all boats.

Once a sold-out magnet for Hollywood’s flamenco-hungry stars, these days El Cid sometimes draws only a dozen patrons looking for a Spanish dinner and flamenco dance show. The club still hosts enough tour groups and regulars to keep its finances in the black, but 20 years of shrinking crowds are telling of a changing Southland flamenco scene.

The public’s interest in flamenco as dinner entertainment seems to have reached a plateau, and yet the number of fans taking a longer-term interest in professional flamenco has dramatically increased. As a result, the dominant clubs and restaurants-many of which have closed or diversified to include other Latin American shows-have been displaced by larger-scale performances in theaters. Local talent once headlined such concerts, but now high costs and competition demand bringing in big-name out-of-towners.

“Flamenco goes in circles. It will be popular, then it goes off the radar screen until someone uses it in a commercial on TV, and then suddenly everyone wants to take classes,” said Juan Talavera, a flamenco teacher in Whittier. He was one of El Cid’s original owners and danced at the club from 1963 to 1989. “Most of the time when a flamenco company comes to town, the audiences go out and see it. The interest is there, you just have to scratch and dig and pull.”

The corridor from San Francisco to Santa Barbara, Los Angeles and San Diego now forms the country’s most active flamenco community, according to Roberto Amaral, a 30-year veteran of teaching and performing flamenco in Los Angeles. The four cities house about 200 dancers, dozens of flamenco guitarists and a handful of singers, estimates Amaral.

Any current popularity boost around Los Angeles is often attributed to California-based performers such as La Tanya, who invite Spanish companies to tour the region, sometimes with American performers.

To counter the rising costs of organizing such visits, foreign flamenco companies are expanding their schedules and seeking larger audiences.

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While concerts and special events with famous dancers, such as this week’s New World Flamenco Festival in Irvine, help bring flamenco to the mainstream and provide workshops with top-notch performers for locals, some say that in a saturated market they can push out local artists.

“There was a period from 15 to seven years ago when very few companies would come from out of town. There was maybe one big concert here every year, and it was often the National Ballet of Spain that would come,” Amaral recalled. “To fill the void, local professionals would self-produce. But this has died down ... and we’re taking a back seat to outside professionals these days.”

And with increasing wages, higher advertising costs and fewer grants “trickling to ethnic dances,” Talavera says, putting on a show is expensive and risky.

“When you self-produce in L.A. you are taking a huge chance, because even if you have a full house, how much did you spend to get it?” he noted. “I produce a show every two years, but I am scared to try every year. I don’t want to overextend my audience.”

Clubs, restaurants and the dancers who perform there do not face the same pressures. For these “flamencos,” who are often students with little professional experience, the club schedule provides consistent work and enables them to develop their style and build a following. For restaurant owners, student dancers willing to perform for little or no pay, serve as an inexpensive entertainment, according to one dancer.

One of the current obstacles to the success of home-grown flamenco for concert and club performers alike, however, is flamenco’s roots in and dependence on the Spanish roma (gypsy) culture. By definition flamenco is imported, and performers not born in Spain usually spend years studying there. Los Angeles is in short supply of native gypsy singers, all of them in high demand, note several performers and producers. Yet they are critical to the dance.

“It’s not the real thing without a singer,” said Cecilia Romero, a dancer from Spain, who, after four years in Los Angeles, is returning to Madrid out of frustration with the staleness of the local flamenco scene. “You miss the story and interaction between the singing, guitar and dance.”

Because the music combines a unique lingo, slurring of words and tonality born from the gypsy experience and handed down the generations, flamenco singing is not taught but picked up, according to Amaral.

“A singer can learn the structure and form of flamenco rhythmically and technically, but they will not have the same soul as a gypsy singer from Spain,” he said.

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Deborah Lawlor, who produces flamenco shows for the Fountain Theatre in Hollywood, said, “It would be looked down on to have an American sing. Flamenco comes out of the life of a gypsy, like the blues originally came out of the experience of the black American. There’s something sacred about the song.”

Southland restaurants that feature flamenco often make do without singers. Alegria, a trendy Latin restaurant in Long Beach, for instance, has flamenco shows four nights a week performed with a guitarist and two dancers, but rarely a vocalist. While this presents a problem for the performers, says Alegria’s Japanese guitarist Jose Tanaka, the audience that frequents clubs probably can’t tell the difference. At El Cid, where one-hour flamenco shows are the centerpieces of dinner, many visitors confuse gypsy-inspired flamenco with Mexican dances and music, says Jack Heywood, the restaurant’s owner for the last 18 years.

“We have a lot of people who come in and want to know when the mariachis start,” he said. He’s concerned, too, that with international culture programs recently canceled across the Los Angeles Unified School District, the next generation of Angelenos will remain clueless about flamenco. “Flamenco is going to become more scarce because people don’t know what it is.”

For less flamenco-dependent restaurants, the cyclical popularity of flamenco is not as much of a concern--it may even be an asset for those adding to their arsenal of Latin American entertainment.

“We get plenty of people who come just for the flamenco,” said Lisa Carrasco, the manager of Alegria. Her club has kept its flamenco show for seven years and added a “Gypsy Kings-like” band and various South American acts during the week. “Having flamenco was one the best things we have done to attract customers,” she said.

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Where to See Flamenco

Clubs with regular flamenco performances:

* Alegria Restaurant, 115 Pine Ave., Long Beach, (562) 436-3388. Thursdays through Sundays, beginning at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday and Sunday and 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

* Casa Escobar Marina, 14160 Palawan Way, Marina del Rey, (310) 822-2199. Thursday only, 9 p.m.

* Cava Restaurant, 8384 W. Third St., L.A., (323) 658-8898. Wednesdays only, 8:30 and 10 p.m.; reservations required.* El Cid Show Restaurant, 4212 Sunset Blvd., (323) 668-0318, https:// www.elcid-ca.com. One-hour shows Wednesdays at 8 p.m., Thursdays and Sundays at 8 and 10 p.m., and Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., 10 p.m. and midnight.* La Luna Negra, 44 W. Green St., Old Town Pasadena, (626) 844-4331. Fridays at 10 p.m. and Saturdays at 8 and 10:30 p.m.* Ole Madrid, 755 Fifth Ave., San Diego, (619) 557-0146.* Sangria Restaurant, 68 Pier Ave., Hermosa Beach, (310) 376-4412. Tuesdays only, 7:30 and 8:30 p.m.* Sevilla Restaurant, locations in San Diego, Riverside and Carlsbad. Saturdays only, 8 p.m. 555 Fourth Ave., San Diego, (619) 233-5979. 3252 Mission Inn Ave., Riverside, (909) 530-0080. 3050 Pio Pico Drive, Carlsbad, (760) 730-7558.* Tapas Bar and Grill, 4253 Martingale Way, Newport Beach, (949) 756-8194. Saturdays only, 7:30 p.m.