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Teaching artist Alice Blumenfeld demonstrates several kinds of clapping and foot stomping patterns used in flamenco and showcases a variety of ways to combine these patterns to create different percussive rhythms.

Vocabulary You Will Learn:

• Compas - The rhythm; the glue that holds the dancer with the guitarist, other musicians and other dancers.
• Palmas - Hand claps. “Palma” is the Spanish word for “palm.”
• Palmas sordas - Soft hand claps, made by cupping your hands and clapping while holding them in opposite directions. “Sordo” is the Spanish word for “deaf.”
• Palmas secas - Crisp hand claps, made by hitting the center of one palm with three fingers on the other hand.
• Golpe -  A sound made by tapping the floor with your whole foot. “Seca” is the Spanish word for “dry.”
• Planta - A sound made by tapping the floor with the ball of the foot, keeping the heel on the floor. “Planta” is the Spanish word for “sole.”
• Tacón - A sound made by hitting the floor with just your heel. “Tacón” is the Spanish word for “heel.”
• Tacón 2 - A sound made by jabbing your heel sharply into the floor.
• Punta - A sound made by tapping the point of the shoe into the floor. “Punta” is the Spanish word for “point.”

Materials You Will Need:

• Nothing, just yourself!

How to Create Flamenco Rhythms 

1. First, we’re going to learn to stand like a flamenco dancer. Stand as tall as you can with feet close together, and put your hands on your hips. 
2. Next, we’re going to learn the two types of palmas, or hand claps, used to create the rhythm in flamenco.
• The first type of palma is called palmas sordas. To create this clapping sound, cup your hands and turn them in opposite directions from one another, then clap!
• The second type of palma is called palmas secas. To create this sound, take your dominant hand and hold the three middle fingers firmly together. Then, clap those fingers into the center of your other palm.
• To practice some different clapping patterns with Alice, scroll to around 2:30 in the video.
3. Now, we’re going to learn a four-count flamenco rhythm using both stomping and clapping. Stomp on one, and then clap on two, three, and four. You can experiment with doing both palmas sordas and palmas secas for this rhythm. 

4. Next, we’re going to learn how to make rhythms with our feet. There are five different footwork sounds Alice shows us.
• The first sound is called golpe. This sound is made by stomping your whole foot onto the floor. Try making this sound with each foot and then by alternating feet as fast as you can.
• The second sound is called planta. To make this sound, tap the floor just with the ball of your foot, keeping your heel off the floor. Try making this sound with each foot. 
• The third sound is called tacón. To make this sound, stand with your feet close together, lift one heel, and stomp it into the ground. Alternate this move between your feet, speeding up until you’re going as fast as you can.
• The fourth sound is called tacón 2. To make this sound, lift your foot and dig or jab the heel into the floor. 
• The fifth and final sound is called punta. To make this sound, tap the point of one shoe into the ground. 
5. Now, we’re going to try putting a few different footwork sounds together. Try adding the planta sound to the tacón sound, alternating between each foot.
6. Next, Alice is going to create a rhythm and you’ll repeat after her. For this portion of the lesson, scroll to around 6:30 in the video and watch what Alice does. 
7. Finally, we’re going to try creating one more combination of sounds. Try  combining planta, tacón, and then two golpes. Create the planta and tacón sounds with one foot, and the golpe sounds with the other foot. Then try adding a pause after the planta sound.

In this video, Alice demonstrates different ways to create the percussive rhythms used in flamenco using hand claps and foot stomping patterns. If you want to go even further, think about these questions: 

• How many different patterns can you create with the five different footwork sounds you learned? Remember that you can repeat a sound several times in a row within a pattern and that you can alternate making the sounds with different feet. 
• We practiced making some short footwork patterns with Alice. Can you make a medium length pattern? What about a really long one, like Alice makes at the end of the video? 
• Can you try incorporating some of the clapping patterns we learned into your flamenco dance? You can add them before, after, or in between the footwork patterns you create.
• Flamenco is a traditional musical and dance style from southern Spain. Do you know of any traditional music or dance from your own culture?

Accessibility

Don't forget that you can turn on "Closed Captioning" to view the YouTube video with English captions.

More about the Teaching Artist

Alice Blumenfeld is the artistic director of ABREPASO flamenco and creator of their ¡Spain Alive! Programs, which bring Spain to life in classrooms and community centers. Previously, she worked as a teaching artist with Project Olé (Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana), leading educational programs in NYC and North Carolina public schools. Alice loves sharing the joy of dance and expressiveness of flamenco through dance and dance history classes. She currently lives in Huron, Ohio. To learn more, visit.

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