A dancer moved to the center of the stage

A dancer moved to the center of the stage. She started with a simple zapateado, a beginning stamping step, gradually pushed faster and faster by the pulsating guitars. The rhythm grew, and the dancing became a form of sensual violence, variations on steps that had been born in gypsy caves a hundred years earlier. As the music mounted in intensity and excitement, moving through the classic figures of the dance, from alegría to fandanguillo to zambra to seguiriya, and as the frantic pace increased, there were shouts of encouragement from the performers at the side of the stage.

Cries of "Olé tu madre," and "Olé tus santos," and "Ands, anda," the traditional jaleos and piropos, or shouts of encouragement, goaded the dancers on to wilder, more frantic rhythms.

When the music and dancing ended abruptly, a silence roared through the bar, and then there was a loud burst of applause.

"She's marvelous!" Tracy exclaimed.

"Wait," Jeff told her.

A second woman stepped to the center of the stage. She had a dark, classical Castilian beauty and seemed deeply aloof, completely unaware of the audience. The guitars began to play a bolero, plaintive and low key, an Oriental-sounding canto. A male dancer joined her, and the castanets began to click in a steady, driving beat.

The seated performers joined in with the jaleo, and the handclaps that accompany the flamenco dance, and the rhythmic beat of the palms enhanced the music and dancing, lifting it, building it, until the room began to rock with the echo of the zapateado, the hypnotic beat of the half toe, the heel, and the full sole clacking out an endless variation of tone and rhythmic sensations.



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