How flamenco doesn’t belong to any country

“Flamenco is clandestino,” said Soledad Barrio, the star of the renowned company Noche Flamenca, who moved with her family from Madrid to Washington Heights two years ago. In a flamenco studio, she continued, “you don’t need big windows — or beautiful space.”

Amor de Dios, the flamenco center in Madrid where Ms. Barrio, 50, and her husband, Martín Santangelo, 51, met and trained, was below ground. She relished its smell: humid.

“Going down the stairs, you felt part of a secret,” she said. You were “isolated from the rest of the city.”

The idea was to inspire, and to take flamenco back to its roots, said Mr. Santangelo, the founder and artistic director of Noche Flamenca. “In Granada, people danced flamenco in caves.”

In Madrid, Ms. Barrio added, the rich “have a private party, after the big party,” where flamenco dancers perform in wine cellars.

The West Park Presbyterian Church, a Romanesque Revival building on West 86th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, where Ms. Barrio now teaches flamenco, has a similar feel. It has been covered with scaffolding for years. It has a side door that is hard to find, and a cavernous sanctuary

More info: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/06/nyregion/a-renowned-dance-couple-keeps-flamencos-flame-burning-in-new-york.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0