Sol y Flamenco

HK Magazine: How did each of you first get into flamenco?
Penny: Back in 2005 I traveled to Europe by myself with only a guitar and HK$10,000. I was a pop musician at the time so I wanted to work on my music during the trip. When I arrived in Spain I was fascinated by flamenco music, which was something I knew little about. I bought an expensive hand-made guitar and studied there for a couple of months, but the result didn’t turn out as good as I hoped, which was quite disappointing and frustrating. So finally I enrolled myself in a professional flamenco school in Seville, where I met my future wife, Reina. I studied flamenco for a total of three and half years and came back to Hong Kong in 2009.
Reina: I always liked dancing and wanted to be a dancer. My mother said to me, “You should do flamenco. When you’re angry you always stomp the ground!” [Laughs] Flamenco is quite popular in my country, Japan. So I studied flamenco dancing for two years in Japan, and went to Spain to learn more.
De Kai: I was born in St. Louis and raised in Chicago, so blues was a big musical influence growing up. I’m actually a pianist and keyboardist, and was classically trained at the Northwestern University Conservatory and Berkelee College of Music. When I first ran into flamenco there was an instant connection. Blues and flamenco are both the lament of an oppressed minority—the African-Americans in the US and the Gypsies in southern Spain. But piano isn’t a typical flamenco instrument, and since I was already playing African percussion at Berkelee, I decided to play the box drum.
Ingrid: I was trained in ballet and acting before. I did that for 10 years and finally had enough. But then I felt something was missing in my life, so I picked up flamenco, which for me is also a form of acting. Flamenco is very passionate. It’s a way to express oneself—very deeply and honestly. If it’s fake, it really shows.

HK: How did the group come together?
Ingrid: It only began a year ago. At first it was me and some friends gathering together and playing flamenco at Uno Mas restaurant—nothing very formal. Then I met Penny and Reina and we started doing it more seriously. We’re a real flamenco band, as opposed to some other flamenco dancers who dance to recorded CD music—which I did and still do at corporate events, but that’s not the way flamenco is supposed to be done. We’re really lucky to have found each other and get the opportunity to perform authentic, traditional, live flamenco.

HK: How has Hong Kong’s flamenco scene changed and what’s its status quo?
De Kai: When I first came to Hong Kong 15 years ago, there was nothing. A couple of years after that there started to be traveling workshops, which stimulated some interest, but mostly on the dance side and not so much the music side. And as world-class flamenco artists came and performed here once or twice a year, the public began to know more about it, and more flamenco teachers emerged.

HK: Are you involved in other projects other than Sol y Flamenco?
Penny: Me and Reina run the Hong Kong Flamenco Art Centre. We have a lot of local and Japanese students who have never had experience in flamenco, and we teach them very basic flamenco techniques that are easy to learn.
De Kai: I’m also a university professor. I do research on computer music and human language technology. So basically, I make machines learn music and language. It’s extremely creative, cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural.
Ingrid: And I’ll be teaching flamenco at the Academy for Performing Arts starting
in October.

HK: What’s the future of this group?
Ingrid: Personally, I would love to see us go on and grow in the future. We would love to have a singer. Right now I’m the dancer but also have to sing for the group. I love singing but it’s too much, too demanding for me to both sing and dance. We would also like to have a second guitarist and maybe a violinist.

Sol y Flamenco performs on Sep 24 and 29. If you’re interested in learning flamenco at the Flamenco Art Centre, visit www.fachk.com for more details.