Flamenco fever is gripping swathes of Asia, luring hard-hit Spanish dancers

Flamenco fever is gripping swathes of Asia, luring hard-hit Spanish dancers and breathing new life into a centuries-old art that touches the soul of Spain.
Like dozens of other flamenco artists, Tomas Arroquero travels every year to Asia to work for several months.
The lean 40-year-old Australian, whose parents are Spanish, has taught flamenco in Japan, China, Taiwan and Hong Kong since he moved to Spain in 1995 to explore his passion for flamenco.
Without job opportunities on the other side of the globe many flamenco artists say it would be impossible to work year-round and dedicate their lives to the song, music and dance of flamenco.
"It is very difficult to sustain yourself full-time in flamenco in Spain. There is so much going on, so many good artists in Spain. Interest from outside provides opportunities," said Arroquero.
Teaching jobs are especially important since they provide the most stable and reliable source of income for many flamenco artists, said Yuko Aoyama, a sociological geography professor at Clark University in the US state of Massachusetts who has studied the trend.
Globalisation raised fears of a common global culture drowning out local art forms like flamenco but instead it has generated new audiences and much-needed sources of income for performers, she said.
"The commercialisation of art and the expansion of markets for art is typically viewed as a bad thing but actually without these markets these arts themselves would find it more difficult to survive," said Aoyama.
Examples of other local arts that have received a boost from interest from abroad include Romanian gypsy dance, Brazilian samba dance and classical Japanese calligraphy, she said.
Though its origins are obscure, flamenco's beginnings have been traced to the interplay of Arabic, Sephardic Jewish and gypsy cultures in the 15th century in the region of Andalucia in southwestern Spain.
Since then flamenco, with its colourful dresses with layers of ruffles known as "trajes de faraleas", has become an icon of Spanish culture which has also become popular among foreigners.
Earlier this year the regional government of Andalucia launched a bid to have flamenco declared part of the world's Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by the United Nations.

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