ON FLAMENCO

Fresh off a bachelorette party in Cancun, Anna put the question to me –

Anna: “On a scale from 1 to 10, how good of a dancer do you think you are?”

Molly: “We’re assuming a 5 is you get on the dance floor and nobody notices you?! Like, you aren’t a great dancer so you’re not noticed for being good but you’re also good enough to not stand out for being horrid?”

Anna: “Exactly”

As I ponder the question, a decade's worth of embarrassment flashes through my mind. You don’t know horror until you’ve been the only gringa on the dance floor in Havana.  

With these memories top of mind I tell Anna “on my best day, I’m probably a three. I’m noticeably bad, but fully cognizant of the fact that I’m a nuisance which is worth three points alone.” 

She smiles knowingly and follows up with “and if you trained for one full year, three times a week what do you think you could reach?”

“A five” I responded confidently. If I trained for one whole year, one type of dance, three times a week I think I could show up to the dance floor and not be noticed.

I tell that story to set the literal stage for a double header flamenco situation in Seville.

It’s 9 o’clock in the morning and Quintin and I are waiting outside a nondescript dance studio ready for our first flamenco lesson. As luck would have it, we’re the only participants. We start the class by learning a bit about different types of flamenco music, the different styles of dance, and then we move into the lesson. Step one is learning how to properly clap, step two is learning how to properly move your wrists. We haven’t even gotten out of our seats and somehow I’m behind. 

Once our wrist movements at least somewhat resemble that of our instructor, we get up and start to learn a four part step. I’m pleasantly surprised by how quickly I pick up steps one through three, and am confident I can master step four before the class ends. We practice a few more times, our instructor gives us a few props and then asks if she can film us doing the final dance. 

Travel is a humbling experience on the best of days, so why not get filmed doing a dance I learned all of 45 minutes ago while wearing a boa? We do our final dance for the camera and you know what?! I don’t feel that pathetic. I think back on my conversation with Anna and smile smugly, knowing that with a year's training, I could be a 5. 

Fast forward 9 hours and we’re seated at Casa de la Guitarra, a famous flamenco tablao in Seville. The evening starts with the guitarist coming out and playing a few songs. He is later joined by the vocalist, and then finally, the dancer. 

She comes out, positions herself in the center of the stage, and the guitarist starts up. I am instantly captivated. She transforms from woman to diosa in under five seconds flat, whipping a fan from her bosom, hands positioned above her head, feet sweeping the floor beneath her, wrists impossibly seducing the whole crowd. Pure drama.

Slowly, her gaze slides across the audience and when she turns to face us, I am brought to my knees. 

In that instant, I realized that to be a five at flamenco, I would have had to been born under an entirely different set of circumstances. Different country, different parents, different culture. There is no white anglo-saxon protestant alive who could conjure that level of PASSION through facial expression alone. I didn’t have that much passion reading my vows to my beloved Teencie on MY WEDDING DAY. And this bitch hadn’t even started to dance yet! She was just standing there, peering at us, making me feel a lifetime's worth of emotion.

It goes without saying that the show was mesmerizing. Her silhouette, flicks of the wrist, the music booming and crashing, the tap of her feet, the slaps of the singer's clapping, and the utterly devastating use of a hand fan. She danced for two songs and wore two dresses. An outfit change for a two song ensemble is exactly the level of extra I aspire to.  Her second dress competed with Cardi’s 2018 Met Gala look and made me gasp as loud as I did when I saw the back of Benito’s 2023 look. It was EXTRAordinary.  

After the show, I went home and watched the video our instructor had taken of Quintin and I dancing earlier that morning. It inspired an ever important reflection which is that if I trained for one year, three times a week, only flamenco, my absolute best case scenario would be a 2.5.