Saying Goodbye to a Flamenco Landmark

Saying Goodbye to a Flamenco Landmark

Text: Maya de Silva Chafe in New York, 7.Feb.2008
Photos: Ricardo Santiago

Where will we go? What will we do? Gentrification was just a dirty word until it affected me personally. Fazil’s, AKA Times Circle Studios, Michael’s or Jerry Leroy’s, depending on the era, a rehearsal studio and a cultural center for “ethnic” dance of all kinds, has finally breathed its last here in NYC. Platinum, a developer of tall glass towers, is the big baddie who took our 15 beautiful, cheap, hardwood dance floor studios away forever.

If those floors could speak… Those wonderful floors, (although with canals and ridges, and hard spots where the I-beams fell) those floors are the best I have ever danced on in 25 years, anywhere in the world that I have personally studied or performed, which includes many, many rooms and stages in Spain, New Mexico, California, New York, NJ, Conn, Mass, DC, Atlanta, Texas, Tennessee. The floors at Fazil’s are what the tappers, Irish step and flamenco dancers will miss the most. Just perfect for percussive footwork, they were the most perfectly aged tongue-and-groove oak, resonant, resilient, no bounce, not too hard, loud or muffled, a beautiful, clear and lean sound (no echo!) that no marley-covered floor, no matter how perfectly sprung, can match.

I don’t care how many fancy ferns and couches grace the common areas, or whatever amenities are included, nothing will claim the special place I will have forever in my heart for these old studios called Fazil’s, where the entire trajectory of my humble career as a flamenco dancer has had it’s thru-line for rehearsal, classes, work, leisure and social life all wrapped into one. “It was the last of the funky Broadway studios”, someone wrote on the wall in studio A1. Remember Harlequin? It was the 2nd to last to go. Now we bid farewell to these halls of creativity, tearfully. “The House of Horrors “is what JoDe Romano AKA La Chispa called it, and rightly so, for Flamenco naturally draws a certain and very strange type of person to it. This was no formal school; it was a rehearsal studio, where anyone could rent space from the manager by the hour. Only $13.00 for a small room, 15’X15’ or so, 15.00 for the medium and 23.00 for the big rooms, a space you could actually teach a class of 25-30 in, and comfortably. I didn’t dare presume to teach for so many years, or even call myself a dancer, not when so many grander than I deserved to take all comers.  Those rooms contained many a drama, a gazillion divine expressions of life in movement manifesting as the art of dance, creativity had such moments, they were visual and often fleeting and people were irrevocably changed.

Today was the last day that the old Jerry LeRoy School of Acrobatics stood open. The list of tappers that worked out here reads like a Who’s Who: The Copasetics , Savion Glover, Honi Coles, Sandman Simms, The Nicolas Bros, my friend Brenda Bufalino, not to even mention those heavyweights Liza Minelli and Gene Kelly. The dance disciplines studied at 743 8th Ave included,.but were not limited to Middle Eastern (Ibrahim Farrah AKA “Bobby”, and Yosri, Ramzi, Gamila, Elena, Reyna Alcala) Flamenco, Kathak (Najma, Rajika), Mexican Folklorico, Tango, Ballroom, Mambo, Salsa, Hip-Hop, Irish, drag shows, club dancers, also actors, singers, auditions, anything basically. The vibes of the dancers that have passed through there have blessed us all and inspired us while we rehearsed, tired or uninspired, hot, bored, overworked and underpaid, with sore feet. They nurtured us, the mirrors fooled us eventually and made us think we looked good, so that we weren’t too nervous the first time out on a stage with a live guitarist and a cantaor (flamenco singer).

 We heard about the “Snake Pit” over Tom Collins’, Tzatziki and that lemon chicken soup at the Greek diner Athenikos, on the corner of 47th and 8th from the great Maria Alba, the last maestra of the props; the intricacies of the use of the fan, shawl, castanets and hat. It was in studio A4, one of the big studios, where one could rent space for as long as required for only 50 cents from 9am to 9pm. But so could everyone else! “That taught you to focus!” she cackled! Opera singers, actors, human contortionists, Apache dancers flamenco and belly-dancers all rehearsing together in complete chaos! This really has an independent life in my imagination now.

“Oh, it’s disgusting, it’s so dirty” my prissy friends used to say. But I always loved it, loved the ghosts and dark corners, the randomness of it. It’s a kind of New York that barely exists anymore, a place that sort of fell through the cracks and got away with out having to pay more or move on long ago, a remnant, a revenant.

Remember Chiquita? Who used to have her sewing machine in B6? She was the sweetest little old lady, with some kind of perpetual turban headdress almost taller than she was, she looked like a shrunken version of Carmen Miranda, only browner, older and with the most twinkling bright eyes, her voice so cheery and loving towards all the dancers. Her costumes were a disaster by the time I knew her, but she still had style.

When I first studied at Fazil’s in 1986 Orlando Romero and Estrella Morente were teaching there. Roberto Lorca, Lilliana Morales, Luis Montero, Maria Alba, Sebastián Castro, Manolo Rivera, José Molina, Ramos, Mariano and Mariana Parra, Jerane Michel, the list goes on and on, in earlier years, José Greco, Ballet Granada, Ramón de los Reyes, Tony Alba, Rafael and Juliana…. Orlando Romero met a gruesome end at the hands of a murderer in Argentina in a case of mistaken identity. Estrella moved down to Miami, Daniel de Cordoba to Dallas. Pedro Cortes, the most Gitano of our American flamenco guitarists, Arturo Mtz, Basilio Georges, Maria Constancia and Reynaldo Rincon, among many others, accompanied the classes. I learned technique and compas (rhythm) from La Meira and La Conja. Later I got up master classes with true Flamenco legends like El Farruco, El Guito, Antonio Canales, Belen Maya and Concha Vargas., and nowadays with Omayra Amaya, when I can find time.

Jose Antonio used to “clean” the studios and in return, soft-hearted Fazil would let him sleep there. Arturo Martinez AKA “Espiritu Gitano’ told me how Jose was a huge star in Puerto Rico as a young man, with incredible magnetism. But in those days he looked terrible; like a pugilist with a swollen red face that came about up to my shoulder, barely intelligible, reeking of booze. Once, when Fazil had the club open downstairs, I saw him dance and he was like a different person, sexy, lithe, and dancing so fiercely I thought the floor might catch fire. He had gone to Vietnam and I think he was a gunner. He was a wreck when he got back. After his parents passed he got the house on the waterfront in Ponce, but it was wretched when we visited once. The house didn’t have a stick of furniture except the 3 tiny rooms he lived in, with a big noisy fighting rooster ranch next door. RR-e-erRRR-eRRr F-ing 24-7!!! We kept asking him to show us Old Ponce but he was only capable of directing us to the liquor store.

My career as a flamenco dancer began at the front desk at Fazil’s when it finally dawned on me that I wasn’t tall blond or stacked enough to be a B’way baby . Plus the double disadvantage of not really knowing how to sing OR tapdance at all discouraged me after too many auditions spent flailing around fruitlessly. I used to haunt the office and announce to everyone who walked in that I wanted to be a flamenco dancer-that I was looking for work. Eventually that wonderful entertainer Paco Montes and Flamenco Latino noticed that I was prepared, reliable and dedicated and started giving me work. But I digress.

It is the end of an era. Good luck and Godspeed to all my dear friends in our little community, our tribe of dancers. I hope I see you all soon in Fazil’s new space that he is still trying to find. So many personalities, I didn’t mention or didn’t get to know half of them, Fazil and his family kept us all sorted out and happily tippy-tapping away, mostly. There were conflicts of course, we alternately roasted and froze every season, there were never any paper towels, but we could leave our gear there in the lockers, so we didn’t mind a few glitches. Plus the Christmas parties were amazing, the most delicious Turkish cuisine, all kinds of wine and beer and all free. Not to mention the wonderful music! The incredible qanun player who enchanted me to even more divinely debauched dancing just when I thought I was too drunk and should go. Well, tonight at last, I did have to clean out the locker and take the combination lock home. It was sad and final and I was glad my daughter was with me. 8th Ave really looks different to me now, it’s hardly even seedy anymore.

              Ah, Fazil’s, we SHALL miss it.