I was hired to play guitar in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's 2003 world premiere of Nilo Cruz's "Lorca in a Green Dress." The play is a surrealistic depiction of Federico Garcia Lorca's journey after his death at the hands of Franco's fascists at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. Lorca was called the "poet of the gypsies" (although he himself was an educated man of letters), and he greatly admired the art of flamenco. As a result, Nilo Cruz includes the character of Duende, an elusive spirit representing a profound state of expression, in the play. This role is played by Conja Abdesselam, a world-class and highly respected flamenco dancer from New York. My former teacher, Pedro Cortes, told me that she is one of the best in the country, and he himself is considered one of the best flamenco guitarists around.

Among my duties, I have arranged guitar and piano pieces for the play, taught songs to the ensemble cast, helped La Conja teach flamenco rhythms to the cast, composed some interlude and background music, and accompanied La Conja on and off stage. This accompaniment includes playing guitar and doing palmas, the rhythmic clapping used in flamenco for a percussive backdrop.

Accompanying the cast is very different than accompanying La Conja. In the case of accompanying the actors, I many times have to play rubato to suit the timing of the scene, or otherwise have to introduce appropriate dynamics in my playing to provide punctuation to the action on stage. In the case of performing with Conja, it's all about rhythm. Rhythm or compás is at the center of flamenco. As a matter of fact, when the great guitarist Paco de Lucia was asked to identify the three most important things in flamenco, his response was, "Rhythm, rhythm, and rhythm."

There is one part where I get to play an arpeggiated passage (falseta) of soleares in a freer time while she dances, but that's it as far as any rhythmic freedom. The rest of the time, I have to be spot on with her. She will apply extraordinary syncopations and odd rhythmic phrasings in her singing and dancing, while at the same time staying within the framework of the accented beats. It's evocative of what I learned about early music from accompanying Pat O'Scannell with David Rogers during the Green Show last year: in some Renaissance forms of music, you often vary the timing of subdivisions and flourishes, but you must always come down on the beat when accompanying the singer. This gives a concurrent impression of rhythmic pulse as well as feeling, what the flamencos call "aire."

You must be a tasteful metronome in flamenco. For example try, clapping with someone at 250+ beats a minute while they clap on the upbeat, and at the same stomp your foot in a repetitive, 12-beat, hemiola-related pattern (as the flamenco's count it: stomp one two stomp four five six stomp stomp nine stomp eleven ...) This is the rhythmic pattern of bulerias, the fastest and most syncopated form of flamenco. I've had to practice all the time, and now I find myself feeling the pulse of that rhythm more and more, without having to count. Spanish gypsies never count. They just feel the beat and sing, dance, and play on top of it. That's where all flamenco needs to come from, and for a non-Spaniard, it takes a long time to "get it."

This rhythmic reinforcement has paid off after just one month of rehearsals. I used to play bulerias according to written transcriptions I had learned, hoping all the time that I was still in rhythm. Well, that doesn't work when you're performing with a dancer and singer. You have to feel the rhythmic patterns. I talked to Pedro about this, and his observation was, "You've done it backwards. You can play the falsetas (melodic passages) well, but you don't know how to groove. You've got to learn how to groove first!" This was an epiphany, a very evocative rephrasing of Sabica's saying about flamenco guitar: "You spend 20 years accompanying the baile (dance) and 20 years accompanying the cante (singing). Then you're ready to play solo." Sabicas used to apologize in concert for having started soloing too early! By the way, it turns out that those two 20-year terms can be simultaneous.

Here I am with 5 years of flamenco, having learned a lot of technique but with most time invested in learning falsetas and composed pieces. Now I feel my real education is beginning. Take bulerias for example, the hardest of the hard. I'm not nearly as intimidated by it now. I continue to study a bunch of rhythmic passages of bulerias, predominantly made up of rasgueos (strumming). Every day, I put on a CD of just bulerias rhythm (there's a series called "Solo Compás" that provides such recordings), and go to town. I clap with it, I play with it, I just listen to it in the background. More and more I'm able to stay in compás when I play, and occasionally I can just play without thinking very far ahead about what I'll play. A few rehearsals ago, I nailed the bulerias palmas, and Conja turned to me and said, "That was good!" I was floating on air.

There's a part of the play where I'm on stage performing a "soleá por bulerías" along with Conja and the cast. This is a form that, like bulerias, is based on the somber soleares, and it is in between soleares and bulerias in tempo. Since I can keep up better with bulerias, this intermediate form is much easier for me now. I am even to the point where I have been composing falsetas on my own that fit with this very common rhythmic pattern, because I'm more comfortable with it. Rhythm is indeed the key to expression and creativity in flamenco.

The journey has at times been frustrating, e.g., losing the rhythm, speeding up (a natural tendency when you're playing/clapping like a bat out of hell with people watching and the adrenaline flowing), not playing with the correct aire, and not getting the proper tone out of the claps. Yes, there are correct ways to clap in flamenco. The loud claps (claras) should sound like a rounded "pop", not a sharp "smack." Rubbing your tummy and patting your head is childsplay compared to putting all these elements together. Still, the rewards have been great, and I look forward to the day when I can make journeys into the true state of flamenco, improvisation based on a solid understanding of compás and aire. Then I will go in search of Duende, just as Lorca did.

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