Zapateado

Zapateado is both a technique and a palo. As technique the word covers all flamenco footwork, from zapatear, to tap, and zapato, shoe: planta, tacón, punta and golpe struck in combination. As a palo it is an Andalusian dance and musical form in 6/8 metre, marked on two beats with heavy stress on the second, and it carries the distinction of being the one flamenco form with no cante at all — the dance is the melody. Its lineage runs through the escuela bolera and nineteenth-century theatrical Spanish dance as much as through Gitano cante, which is why it sits slightly apart from the cante-derived palos. The convention is a duet of equals: dancer and guitarist work in unison, building from simple taps and bell-like harmonics into rapid, dense variations over a repeated melodic theme. Composers outside flamenco wrote for it too — Pablo de Sarasate included a Zapateado in his Spanish Dances, Op. 23, and Paco de Lucía wrote Percusión Flamenca for guitar. The related Mexican zapateado developed independently from colonial-era Spanish antecedents.