Flamenco Classes

If you are looking for your child to try a style that is completely unique and exotic, flamenco may be a great choice!

With its origins in the southern region of Spain, flamenco has strong influences from the Andalusian gypsies and cultures of southern Asia. Further, flamenco is a style that incorporates intricate footwork with graceful hand motions. The different styles of music dictate the intensity of the foot movement and the feet, hands, body, and face all amplify each other in this cultural and intense style of dance. This genre of dance also incorporates other percussion instruments like castanets, bells, tambourines, etc to add rhythm to choreographic pieces.

The emergence of flamenco as a famous, traditional dance came about in the 19th century with the opening of the first cafe where flamenco dancers performed, in Seville, Spain. This event transformed the typical family, home-oriented dance into a public performance enjoyed by spectators. Today, flamenco is widely popular in Spanish speaking countries, primarily those of the Latin American region.

How does Ascendance incorporate flamenco?

Being in the heart of Miami, the home of a large Hispanic community, we are glad to have flamenco as a style represented at our studio. Our flamenco classes are categorized by age and open to all ages. For our younger dancers, the class is divided into 30 minutes of ballet and 30 minutes of flamenco. This class teaches them the grace and technique of ballet, while educating them on the percussion and rhythmic aspect of flamenco.

Our older students take a full hour of flamenco class and are taught traditional flamenco skills including: footwork, upper body movement, hand motions, and additional percussive touches that can be added to performances like: claps, snaps, and vocal accents. Each class contains a warm-up, across-the-floor, and center/choreography component to teach students everything from technique to facial expressions.

Benefits of Flamenco

Similar to other dance styles, flamenco allows dancers to incorporate total body exercise that tones the arms and legs. Flamenco dancers are known to dance heavily with their upper bodies while performing quick footwork, giving them plenty of cardio-vascular exercise. Apart from this, flamenco teaches focus through the learning of complex rhythms, allowing the brain to isolate individual sounds when interpreting rhythms and patterns. The students also learn musicality and how to create various rhythms to one phrase of music. All in all, it is a great style to challenge oneself and exercise in a fun way!

Objectives of flamenco

• To build a strong upper body
• To teach musicality and rhythm
• To provide a fun atmosphere and meet new friends
• To expose students to a cultural, traditional style of dance that differs from the rest
• Allows for cardiovascular and muscle building exercises to be performed in an entertaining way that your child will love
• To build and identify patterns with ease
• To adapt style and rhythm