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Grupo Danzas de Fuengirola

Contact

Group Director and Teacher: Mrs. María Trinidad León Quintero

For English communications please contact our group secretary - Anabel Figueredo on danzasfuengirola@gmail.com

Public relations: Mr. Manuel Garrido Jimenez - E-mail: manugarr@telefonica.net

If you would like our group to take part in any festival or event in your area, please contact our group secretary on danzasfuengirola@gmail.com

Festivals where the Ensemble has taken part

The Grupo Munical de Danzas de Fuengirola was founded in 1962 by its current Director Maria Trinidad Leon Quintero. This ensemble has represented Spain in several International Festivals. You can find below a list of the festivals where the group has taken part.

CONFOLENS (FRANCE ) 1.974
OLORON ( FRANCE )
ROCHEFORT ( FRANCE )
GENÇAY ( FRANCE )
DIJON, (FRANCE ) Bronze Medal, 1.986
LES LANDES (FRANCE )
BAYONA ( FRANCE )
RUSSI ( ITALY ) 1.997
AVIANO ( ITALY ) 1.997
IMOLA ( ITALY) 1.997
AGRIGENTO (SICILY, ITALY ) 1.977 and 2002, 2nd Prize for Costumes
CASTROVILLARI (ITALY )
MARRUECOS ( RABAT )
TILBURG ( HOLLAND)
BILLINGHAM ( UNITED KINGDOM )
FOLKESTONE (UNIKTED KINGDOM)
NETANYA ( ISRAEL )
MALINA ( BELGIUM )
DRUMMONDVILLE ( CANADA ) 1.992 and 2000
WAINESVILLE (NORTH CAROLINA, U.SA.)
IZMIR (TURKEY )
FARO ( PORTUGAL )
AUSTRIA ( Tour by different cities) October, 2001
MONFORTE DE LEMOS (LUGO, SPAIN) August 2002
JACA (SPAIN) July 2003
ALBEROBELLO (BARI, ITALY) August 2004
GUADALAJARA (MEXICO) October 2005
ALATRI (ITALY) August 2006
KATOWICE (POLAND) August 2007
BELGRADE (SERBIA) July 2008
SUMMERFEST TÖKÖL, RACKEVE & SZAZHALOMBATTA (HUNGARY) August 2009
FESTARTE, MATOSINHOS, (PORTUGAL), July and August 2010


The ensemble has also taken part in several Spanish Festivals as well as folklor tours in: Russia, Portugal, Checoslovaquia, Germany, England, France, Moroco, Austria, Italy, etc.

Repertoire

Ever since its foundation in 1962, our group has fascinated people from all over the world with the wondrous and distinctive Spanish art, the spellbinding charm of its magic of sound and dance. Due to its rich repertoire and high professionalism our ensemble is laureate of prestigious prizes almost every year. Our repertory includes Spanish classical dances, Verdiales dances (traditional country dances of the Province of Malaga) Sea dances (traditional dances from the coastal cities from Malaga), Traditional Flamenco and Flamenco Hondo (also known as Pure Flamenco)

BRIEF RESUME OF THE DANCES INTERPRETED BY OUR GROUP

VERDIALES DANCES (FANDANGOS DE VERDIALES)
The name of these dances in Spanish comes from “Verdial”, which is a type of olive, that is collected by hand and that is grown in the Mountains of Malaga. The “Verdial” comprises a song, music and dance and are apparently prior to Flamenco itself. The differences with the latter, on one hand, can be found in the numerous accompaniments of string and percussion instruments (violin, lute, guitar, cymbals and tambourine), which denote an Arab influence, whilst Flamenco songs are accompanied only by guitars and clapping. On the other hand, the Verdial is a song composed for dance, and the art of the singer, is secondary to the dance. Also there are two varieties of Verdiales, the Mountains one which is accompanied by guitars, violin, cymbals and castanets and the Coastal one which is accompanied by guitars, mandolins, lutes and castanets.

COSTUMES:
The costume is based on the typical dress of the countryside.
Women wear print dress in different colours, white apron, flowers in the hair, printed shawl, cancan, “puchos” (special underwear trousers), white tights and black fabric and esparto shoes with strings of several colours.
Men wear white shirt, short black trousers, scarf, red strip tied to the waist, white tights and white fabric and esparto shoes with black strings.
Both women and men wear colour strings in the hands.

NAME OF A FEW VERDIALES DANCES
Fandango de Santa Catalina, Zángano de Álora, Fandango de Cártama, Fandango de Comares, etc.
Special mention for the Fandango de la Siega (Fandango of the Harvest): This dance was interpreted in most of the Fairs of inland towns and cities of Andalusia after the wheat harvest. Men dance with the wheat sickles.

SEA DANCES (DANZAS MARINERAS)
These dances were interpreted next to the sea by the fishermen after a good catch, in the main Fairs, such as Summer Solstice, Virgen del Carmen Fair (Protector of the Fishermen) etc

COSTUMES
Women wear blue skirt, white or pink shirt with strings on the sleeves, flowers in the hair, white apron and white fabric shoes.
Men wear short black trousers, white shirt, red strip tied to the waist and white fabric shoes
Some times, and depending on where the dances takes place, the dancers will dance without shoes.

INSTRUMENTS
Guitars, mandolins, lutes and castanets

NAME OF A FEW SEA DANCES
Pregón del Cenachero (Speech of the Fish Vendor), Malagueña de Gibralfaro, Fandango de Fuengirola, etc.

We would like to mention the Speech of the Fish Vendor, known in Malaga as Cenachero (from Cenacho in Spanish which means basket). The Cenachero is a typical figure of Malaga tradition, and is a fish vendor who holds in perfect balance the two baskets he normally carries full of fish. Our ensemble wanted to pay tribute to a popular figure, now no longer seen, who walked the streets selling his fish and making his baskets “dance” as they hung from their shoulders or elbow. To catch everybody’s attention, the Cenachero used to shout and sing special songs saying how good the fish he was crying was.

Fandango de Fuengirola
In 1972 the current Director of this ensemble, Mari Trini as we all call her, found out that there was a typical dance of Fuengirola,(Fandango de Fuengirola) that was about to disappear as the only people who could dance and sing it were very old and had not explained how to dance it to anybody else. Mari Trini asked the Major of Fuengirola to try and find these people and try and convince them to show her this dance, in the meantime, she started to do a research about this dance, to find out its origin and she found out that the people from Fuengirola and Mijas used to dance this Fandango when they got together after a long day of work in the field or after taking the catch to the fish market. One year later, the Group added this Fandango to its show, and reached a great success and nowadays, this Fandango that was about to disappear, is known by hundreds of Fuengiroleños that were able to learn it thanks to Mari Trini.

POPULAR FLAMENCO
Typical dances of all the provinces of Andalusia, for instance: Sevillanas, Malagueña, Tanguillos de Cádiz, Fandangos de Huelva (one of the oldest flamenco songs), La Reja de Granada, El Vito, de Córdoba, etc. Most of these dances have been recovered by the tradition and they all used to be danced and sang by our grandparents.

INSTRUMENTS: Guitars and mandolins.

COSTUMES: Typical costumes from Andalucía, all of them based on traditional costumes from 16th century up to now

FLAMENCO "HONDO" (PURE FLAMENCO)
Flamenco Hondo is the traditional flamenco, a bit more serious than the popular one.
Peteneras, Tientos, Alegrías de Cádiz, El Café‚ de Chinitas (by García Lorca) Farruca, etc.

INSTRUMENTS: Normally accompanied by guitars

CLASSICAL SPANISH DANCES
Danza Andaluza nº5,(de Granados) Bolero, malagueña Clásica, Rumores de la Caleta, Panaderos, Cachucha, Puerta Tierra, Potpourri of classical dances, etc.

Most of the classical dances are not interpreted in Festivals as the music is not live. If the Festival Organisation requires, we will be pleased to dance them using a CD player

COSTUMES: Traditional costumes of the 18th century

Video - Tanguillos de Cadiz

This is a lively song from Cadiz province which is called Tanguillos de Cadiz. The lyrics of this type of song are normally very funny and explain stories which have happend in the past.

Video - Speech of the Cenachero and Fandango of Fuengirola

We are specially proud for this song and introduction. As explained above, the introduction is the Speech of the Cenachero (sort of Fisherman who used to sell what he had fished in a basket called "cenacho"). This is one of the main icons of Malaga. The dance and music have been recovered by our Director, as these are traditional from our town. It is incredible how still some inhabitants of our town remember that they used to dance and sing it when they were children. Hope you enjoy watching it!

Videos - Fandandos de Huelva

This is a bit of one of our very own popular flamenco songs. This song is typical of Huelva, therefore its title is Fandangos de Huelva and it is one of the oldest songs of the flamenco. Hope you like it, enjoy!

Video - Tientos

This is one of our "pure flamenco" performances. The title of the song is "Tientos". This type of song is very slow and sober, and you will feel the dramatic character of both.

Photos of our group

If you want to see photos of our group, please click here.

http://corosydanzasfuengirola.blogspot.com/search/label/Fotos

Fuengirola

Fuengirola is a town and municipality on the Costa del Sol in southern Spain in the province of Málaga and the autonomous community of Andalucia. It is a major tourist resort on the Costa del Sol, with more than 8 km of beaches, and home to a mediaeval Moorish fortress.
The area enjoys a subotropical Mediterranean climate, with annual average temperatures of 18 ºC.

History
The town has its origins in Phoenicia, Roman and Arab civilisations.

The foothills of the mountain range behind the town to the south are the site of an Arab castle, which contains remains of an early Ibero-punic or Phoenician settlement, later occupied by the Romans, which became a town known in antiquity as Suel. Suel was identified by the Roman historian, Pomponius Mela, as one of the towns of the coast, and was cited by Pliny in the 1st century A.D. as a fortified town (oppidum). A later historian, Ptolemy, identified it during the 2nd century A.D. as being located in the region of the bastulo-penos or Phoenicians.

The inscription on the pedestal of a statue found near the castle mentions Suel as being a Roman "municipium". A funeral urn found in the same area has an inscription containing the word "Suelitana". Roman baths were discovered in 1961 and, close by, the remains of a Roman villa containing two sculptures, one of which is the well known "Venus of Fuengirola" exhibited in the town's museum. A series of architectural components, probably transported from the Mijas quarry during the Roman era, were discovered in Los Boliches in 1984; these have now been mounted to form a temple entrance, and can be seen on the promenade at Los Boliches.

The castle was built by Abderramán III in the mid-10th century. The city of Suel ceased to be mentioned at the beginning of the Middle Ages. After several centuries, the name of the settlement changed from Suel to Suhayl, which became the name of the castle and surroundings during the Arab occupation. Suhayl became a fairly large settlement, which included farmland and small villages. Most of the area seems to have been used as pasture for the Moorish rulers' camels.

But in the early Middle Ages the town was set on fire and its inhabitants fled to Mijas. Suhayl became a mound of ruins, and even its name was changed to the Romanised Font-Jirola, after the spring arising at the foot of the castle, according to historian Alonso de Palencia.

In 1485, when only the fortress remained, the settlement was reconquered by the Christian Monarchs. An attempt to repopulate the site with 30 people failed, and in 1511 it was registered as uninhabited, apart from the fortress and a watchtower. Land originally set aside for Fuengirola was reallocated to Mijas.

In the 17th century, a new urban settlement developed, once the threat from Turkish and Moroccan pirates disappeared, and at the beginning of the 18th century, an inn was opened near the beach, offering accommodation to travellers, muleteers and seafarers. A few huts were built nearby, forming a small village.

The Battle of Fuengirola took place in the area during the Peninsular War, on October 15, 1810, when approximately 200 Polish soldiers of the Ducky of Warsaw defeated a mixed British-Spanish force numbering some 3,000 soldiers under Lord Blayney.

In May 1841, Fuengirola was detached from Mijas; at the time its inhabitants were mainly engaged in fishing, agriculture and trading with ships that dropped anchor in the bay. For over a century, fishing and agriculture remained the main activities.

It was only in the 1960s that Fuengirola entered a new phase, to become a leading tourist centre.

Modern Fuengirola
Fuengirola now offers all the facilities to be expected of a major tourist centre - hotels, restaurants, bars, discotheques, sports clubs, a yacht harbour, and broad beaches along a promenade extending east and west from the town, that includes smaller adjacent villages.

Of the approximately 60,000 inhabitants registered in the municipality, 25% come from other countries, mainly European (United Kingdom, Ireland, Finland and Sweden, among others), and also from Morocco and Argentina. In the summer especially, the town plays host to throngs of visitors both Spanish and foreign, but in particular British. The English community in particular is large enough to support a fully developed programme of activities and local groups.

Fuengirola Zoo is well known. Once an old-fashioned collection of cramped cages, the zoo was modernized in 2001 to feature "tropical-forest" dwellings. The zoo specializes in captive breeding for endangered species, chimpanzee-group research and tropical-forest education.

Although Fuengirola is a comparatively developed resort it does also have a number of historical sites and open parks. The old port is still used by the local Spanish fisherman. The Arab castle of Suhayl, or Sohail, remained an abandoned ruin until renovations began in 1995. In 2000 the interior of the castle was completely renovated and the Sohail castle begun to host festivals and concerts throughout the summer. Additional landscaping was completed in 2002 and the castle is now one of the highlights of Fuengirola's cultural and historical scene.

The town is largely urban in character, with many high-rise blocks - many towards the sea-front - although some narrow streets can be found with many low-rise villas. Considerable commercial development is underway further inland, towards to the north of the town, with the recent construction of a large shopping centre and retail park and ongoing development of housing areas.

Sights in Fuengirola
Sohail Castle (Arabic castle)
Harbour
Plaza de Toros (bullring)
Zoologico de Fuengirola (zoo)

The castanets

History
The backgrounds of the castanets come from the prehistory. Since the dance is based in rhythm and is one of the more primitive artistic ways of expression, we can conjecture that the castanets were one of the first musical instruments created by the human. It is possible to find the primitive castanets in all the continents, like a testimony of the loosen civilizations or in a more elaborated version, like it happens in Spain.

The oldest precedent of the castanets can be placed in the Paleolithic, and it was found in Ukraine. It is a sort of wristlets made in ivory, which makes a harmonious sound when they are clattered. Later, we can find a testimony of the use of this kind of instruments in the Egyptian, Chinese, Carthaginian or Greek civilizations

However, in spite of this civilizations influence in later cultures, the real origin of the Spanish castanets is probably the Iberian "crusmata" (the Iberian was an antique culture, placed where Spain is). It is composed of two wooden pieces, two shells or two stones, which dancers and musicians played laying them held of their fingers, into the palm of the hand. Unlike the other sorts of castanets, the Iberian crusmata had the two pieces joined by a cord put through holes.

Spanish castanets are the only that have been evolved through the time, unlike it has happened in another countries, where they remain in their original form. In Spain, the castanets have been adapted to the dancer or player’s needs, obtaining the ideal form for the good performance of the rhythms that accompany the dance and the singing.

The size and the decoration of the castanets is different and depends on the area and the use. In the beginning, the castanets were tied to the four fingers and shaken with the wrist. Also, for some kinds of Spanish dances, they could be fixed to the medium finger. But, in the XVIII century a great change took place, because of the new fixation system in the thumb and also for the boom in the Classical Spanish Dance, with dances like "seguidillas" or "boleros", all of them performed with castanets. It is in this moment when we can say that the classical Spanish castanets were born, and they are very similar to the ones that are used nowadays.

Characteristics
The name of the castanets (castañuela, in Spanish) comes from the antique Latin word "castanea", which means chestnut. In Spain, the castanets have some names depending on the different areas: "postizas" in Valencia, "tarrañuelas" in Asturias, "jotaneos" in Aragon, "pitos" in Galicia and "palillos" in Andalusia.The castanets can have different form and shapes.. Before fixing it in the thumb, there were lots of different versions of the sheet according to the region.A pair of castanets is composed for a macho (male) and a hembra (female). The hembra has a higher tone; it depends of the different aperture between the two sheets.

The sheet can be divided in the following parts:

- Heart (corazón): inner hollow.

- Shell (concha): down rounded part of the sheet.

- Ears (orejas): upper part of the sheet, with two holes through which the cord is passed.

- Hinge (puente, bisagra): the thinner part, the link between the two ears.

- Spot (punto): the place where the two sheets touch each other, in the shell’s base. It's very important for the quality of the sound.

- Lip (labio): is the strip between the heart and the sheet’s edge. Sometimes, it has a small embossing which separates the sheet’s ears.

The castanets are made of different materials: metal, ivory, bone, wood or pressed cloth, however the best material is wood. There are castanets made in boxwood, walnut, beech, lignum vitae, rosewood, ebony, chestnut tree, oak... But the best wood for the castanets, is the "granadillo", a wood imported from South America and Africa, which was used in the XVIII century and which nowadays is the favourite of the professionals

Whichever they are their characteristics, the castanets must be tuned up in order to obtain the best sound. The only way to get this tone, is playing them for hours, and then introduce them in a cover, a small bag that protects them from the environmental changes. The extreme temperatures and the damp are very harmful, and could cause splits and breaking in the castanets.