Customer Reviews

Gypsy Heart - The Heart and Soul of Flamenco Dancing [VHS]

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Although this video is low budget it has great footage of real live flamenco dancing both in performance and real life situations. The footage showing Carmen Amaya's dancing is absolutely amazing, you really don't know what a flamenco dancer is capable of doing until you see Carmen dance. Her great niece Omayra is not far behind, her intense passion for this dance shows in every one of her moves. This video really captures the heart of flamenco and Amaya's heart as well. For all of you who are fascinated with dancers lives this is a fabulous video. And for all of you studying dance, specifically flamenco, it is very inspiring. I gave it a 4 stars because of the film quality, but the video is great!! Check it out

This fifty-minute tape contains substantial footage, all very short segments, of Omayra Amaya, who is a young woman with her own flamenco dance company in Boston. The clips are from class and performance. It contains a few precious black-and-white glimpses of Omayra's great-aunt, the immortal Carmen Amaya, considered by some the greatest flamenco dancer of all time, in performance.

Omayra and other family members discuss natural dancers versus classroom dancers, tradition versus experimentation, and other topics of interest to anyone studying any folk dance tradition.

A film of this length that tries to be both dance documentary and in-depth interview ends up being neither. The flashes of insight offered are tantalizing, but nothing more.

This is short but mildly entertaining because Miss Amaya can dance and they at least film some of it. Most of her numbers are not complete presentations, however. She does leave you wanting to see more of her dancing. I'm still looking for a really good tape of Flamenco and wishing the National Ballet of Spain had some of their performances on video. The other tape, "Flamenco" is worse than this one. So far, the VHS "Nights in the Gardens of Spain" and the Spanish film of "Carmen" set in a dance studio have the best examples of Flamenco dancing I've seen on video.

I thought I was purchasing a "dance" tape but ended up with a "life story" tape.