“Passport?” The dark-eyed immigration official put out his hand and raised an eyebrow as I rummaged in my bag.
I’d just stepped off the plane at Seville Airport after a thirty-hour flight from Sydney. My breath was furry, my eyes were bleary, and my face was as rumpled as my clothes. And here I was, face-to-face with the epitome of tall, dark, and handsome.
At the same time, my bag seemed to have transformed itself into an interdimensional vortex. Instead of my passport, I kept pulling out random objects I hadn’t seen in years: old notebooks, those sunglasses I thought I’d lost, a Pez dispenser…
“Er…” I muttered, looking up at the immigration guys. There was not one but four, all standing languidly around the passport checkpoint, each more gorgeous than the last. I’d known Spain had a reputation for being up the steep end of the graph when it came to looks, but I hadn’t expected to be confronted with the evidence before I’d even picked up my suitcase.
They nodded ever so slightly as the other passengers from my flight walked past and held up their passports. I couldn’t help comparing this to the rigorous exit procedure at Sydney Airport, where after having my passport scrutinized by a stern man in a glass box who had made me cross my heart and hope to die that I wasn’t an al-Qaeda operative/endangered-wildlife smuggler, I was asked a series of calculated questions about where I was going and for how long. But the Spaniards didn’t even ask to see the photo page.
One of the guys leaned forward. He had bright green eyes, a two-day beard, and a uniform that fitted in a way that left me in no doubt of the bulging biceps beneath. He asked in the sexiest accent, “You have something for declare?”
“Um…no,” I said.
“No?” he repeated, a wounded look crossing his beautiful face. “You no declare no thing?”
I mentally scanned the contents of my bag and tried to remember whether I’d thrown out that apple core. “Uh, no. Nothing.”
“Are you sure?”
People kept coming past, showing their passports, and being waved through, but I still couldn’t find mine.
“I have something to declare,” the immigration guy said, leaning in closer. “I declare I love you.” The rest of the guys started laughing. Great, I thought as I turned red.
“What for you come to Spain?” one of the other guys asked. That question instantly put me on guard. So that was their game. They were trying to trap me into admitting that I had come there to work without a visa or sell drugs or steal Spanish babies for shady international adoption agencies.
“Just a holiday,” I said, a little too quickly. I tried to make up for my nervous reply by adding, “And to see some flamenco.”
“Flamenco?” The guys exchanged glances. “What do you know about flamenco?”
“Um…” I floundered, feeling the pressure of eight smoldering eyes on me.
“See this boy?” he said, pointing to one of the other officials, who smiled suavely, flashing a set of Colgate teeth. “He is a very nice dancer. You want to see?” He started clapping and singing a flamenco tune, and his colleague stepped forward. He lifted his arms, clicked his fingers, and began to dance.
I stared, dumbfounded, as the guy who was supposed to be checking my passport for suspicious stamps or recent trips to Colombia wiggled his shoulders and stamped his feet on the carpet of the terminal floor.
“Olé!” cried the other guys.
“Enjoy your vacation,” one of them added.
My fingers finally grasped my passport at the bottom of my bag. I pulled it out triumphantly, but they paid no attention. They were already waving through the next line of arrivals.
A sign on the wall in front of me said WELCOME TO SPAIN. That’s right, Spain. It felt too good to be true, that after working and saving and planning and packing and repacking I had finally made it to the land of flamenco.
My parents had taken me to the airport in Sydney. Dad checked me in and used his frequent-flier card to get me lounge passes. He seemed as excited about my trip as if he were going himself, and I was relieved that he’d recovered from his initial anxiety about his eldest child throwing her life away.
I hadn’t known how my parents would react when I told them of my plan to spend six weeks dancing flamenco in Seville. I finally broached it with Mum while she was making dinner one night, and she said the same thing she always said when I came to her with a plan: “Good idea, darling.”
“But,” I’d pressed, “you don’t think I’m being irresponsible?”
“Nellie.” She put down the potato peeler. “Being irresponsible is what being an adult is all about.”
Then I went upstairs to my father’s office where he was working on a script. “You’re going to Spain to dance flamenco,” he repeated back to me. Illuminated by the glare of the computer screen, his face was etched with concern.
“Yes.”
There was a pause before he asked, “And where do you think this will lead you?”
The question didn’t seem fair to me. It seemed that every other day my parents had young people coming to them itching to work in the film industry. My father would look at those kids, fresh out of school, and tell them to go off and live a life and come back to him when they had some real stories to tell. And now, when I was proposing to do just that, he just sighed and said, “It’s your life, Nellie.”
But when we said good-bye at the airport gate, that was all forgotten. Dad made sure my camera was set to the right aperture, then told me to check my email when I got in because he’d sent me an article from the New York Times with a list of the best tapas restaurants in Seville. And Mum told me not to worry, because everything was going to be wonderful.
I couldn’t help getting teary as I said good-bye. But as I walked through the entrance into the “passengers only” section of the airport, I felt my excitement build. My journey had begun, and each step I took was taking me closer to my new adventure.
• • •
As part of my booking, the dance school had organized my accommodation. I was renting a room in the apartment of a woman called Inés, who worked at the school office.
“Welcome to Sevilla,” she said, opening her door wide and helping me in with my bags. Inés was in her late twenties and had brown hair to her shoulders with a long fringe and a big smile. She spoke good English and was used to showing foreigners around her home.
She had two bedrooms that she rented out to flamenco students. Mine was a narrow room with a single bed, a wardrobe, a bedside table, and a window that looked out over the courtyard. I left my suitcase and followed her as she showed me the rest of the apartment. There was a big living room with a little balcony and a small kitchen with an old gas stove and a wooden table.
“This is a really great part of the city,” she said. “It is called La Macarena. Only two minutes walking from here is the long street called the Alameda de Hércules, which is full of bars and cafés and restaurants. It’s a great place to go out for drinks or for dinner. You’re not vegetarian, are you?”
“No,” I said.
Inés looked relieved. “Good. Some of the girls who come here are vegetarian, and you know in Spain vegetarian does not exist.”
“Actually,” I said, “I’m vegan.”
Inés looked at me blankly. “What is vegan?”
I explained proudly that vegans are like vegetarians, except they don’t eat any products that come from animals.
“So what do you eat?” she asked.
“Lots of things. Brown rice, whole grains, lentils…” I went through the vegan’s shopping list as Inés’s eyebrows climbed higher and higher up her forehead.
“Wow,” she said. “You are really going to starve.”
Inés didn’t realize that’s what vegans do. When there’s no bean curd to be had, we starve proudly, looking scornfully at those who say, “Let them eat cake.” And anyway, what did I care about food? I was in Spain to dance, and that was all that mattered to me.
Inés looked at her watch. “I have to go to the office now. Do you want to come with me and see the school?”
“Absolutely,” I said, forgetting my jet lag and the exhaustion I was feeling after the thirty-hour flight.
“Vámonos,” she said. Let’s go.
I think I first fell in love with Spain on that walk to the dance school through the narrow, winding alleyways of the old town. It was the middle of March, and spring was in the air, and flamenco music seemed to come from everywhere. It spilled down from open windows. A car drove past with flamenco blaring on the radio. A man chatting to a friend on the corner sang a few lines of a song, then went back to talking. Notes from a guitar floated toward us on the breeze. The five-minute walk from Inés’s place to the dance school was like a flamenco odyssey.
I’d expected the academy to be a big stone building full of dancers waving fans about and swarthy guitarists skulking in every corner. But it wasn’t imposing at all; it was just one of a row of white-painted, low-rise apartment blocks. Somehow that seemed even more exotic to me. I was intrigued by the thought that behind this unassuming facade there was a world of flamenco madness.
Inés pressed a buzzer next to a picture of a fan, and the gate clicked open. Off a little tiled courtyard were two dance studios. I followed Inés to the first door.
“This is the class you will start on Monday,” she said as she waved to the tired-looking teacher who was trying to walk her students through some simple steps.
To my surprise, the students looked like tourists, not flamenco dancers. Some were wearing new red-and-black flamenco skirts, while others just wore tracksuit pants. Many of them seemed to be having a hard time coordinating their arms and feet. One gave up altogether and put her hands on her hips and counted softly to herself as she stepped forward and back. Looking around the room again, I saw that not one of the students was even wearing flamenco shoes.
“Maribél is an incredible dancer,” Inés whispered. I could tell by the way the teacher moved that she was a good dancer, but there was nothing she could do with the class in front of her. It looked like none of them had had a flamenco lesson in their life. I could only imagine how Diana would have reacted if one of these girls had tried to walk into my flamenco class back home.
Inés told me to stay and watch for as long as I liked. I nodded and said nothing. What could I have said? As I watched the class from the doorway, all I could think was, This is it? This is what I’ve come to Spain for? It was beyond depressing. I wanted to walk in there and straighten bent elbows, bend straight knees, and pull back shoulders. But even the teacher seemed to have given up on that.
What about my dream of dancing flamenco in Spain? I’d envisaged something fast-paced and exciting. I wanted it to be too hard. I wanted to collapse at the end of the day, giddy with the new rhythms. I wanted to struggle and learn and get better. That’s what I was here for. Yes, I’d been nervous; I’d been scared. But I wanted to be nervous; I wanted to be scared. Dancing flamenco in Spain should be scary! This class of tourists was just not what I signed up for.
As I lingered in the courtyard, I heard the sound of stomping feet and a man shouting. It was coming from the second studio. The door was closed, but from the sound of the feet, I could tell it was an advanced class.
I went over and listened at the door just as a man started to sing over the stamping feet. Now I had to see what was going on in there. I pushed lightly at the door, and it opened a fraction. I peeked through the crack in the doorway and looked in. The dancers spun around, colored skirts flying. In the corner I could see the guitarist; sitting next to him was an old flamenco singer who sang a heartrending song. The students leaned backward and curled their arms up above their heads.
As the music shifted to a faster tempo, I pushed the door open a fraction more. The dancers swayed their hips to the sound of the guitar, then the singer jumped up out of his seat and belted out the verse. The dancers jumped heavily onto the floorboards and threw themselves into fast footwork.
“No!” a man shouted.
The teacher strode into my sight line. I edged forward again and watched him demonstrate the steps, his black flamenco boots pounding the floor at lightning speed. I’d never seen anyone move that fast. He finished off the steps by spinning around one, two, three times and landing on two feet.
Whoa.
He clapped his hands and the students took the section again.
“No!” He stopped them and again tilted his body and spun around impossibly quickly, landing perfectly on both feet. The girls tried again; some finished on time, but others were still late.
I was getting dizzy just watching them. I hated turns. I would have been so much happier if they didn’t exist in flamenco. I didn’t like getting dizzy and I didn’t like falling over, and spinning around on one foot practically guaranteed both.
The teacher grabbed a stick from the side of the room and shouted, “Otra vez!” Again! He beat the stick into the floor and counted, “Uno, dos, tres!”
The girls shifted slightly onto the balls of their feet, getting ready to pounce. The singer began the verse again, and the girls threw themselves into an explosion of footwork.
“Fuera!” Out! the teacher yelled.
If they were out of time, it was only by a fraction of a second, but that was enough to get a passionate lecture from the teacher. The guitarist started the music over and the teacher jumped forward and danced, slamming the floor with his heels. He moved so fast that his feet were a blur.
“Otra vez,” he said. The guitarist resumed playing, and the girls wiped the sweat from their brows and prepared to take the section from the beginning. I pushed the door open a little farther and watched how the students moved into position with their arms raised perfectly above their heads, then slowly brought their arms down, twirling their wrists.
I heard the tread of the teacher’s shoes on the floor, and then he pushed the door shut. I snapped my head back as the door slammed in my face.
And that about summed it up. I wouldn’t last five minutes in there, I told myself. I must be mad for even thinking about it. There’s no way I can do that class! But even as I tried to tell myself that, I knew it was no good. I had to find a way into that studio. The door that had just been slammed in my face was like a portal to a fabulous flamenco universe, and after one glimpse of it, there was no way I could go into the tourist class.
I found Inés sitting at her desk in a little office space on the second floor. “Did you see the class?” she asked.
“I did,” I said. “But it looked very…basic.”
Inés frowned. “Maribél is teaching the beginners’ level. You made a reservation for beginners, no?” She riffled through the papers on her desk in search of my booking.
I explained that I had made that booking thinking the level in Spain would be higher than what I was used to in Sydney. “But there is another class,” I said.
“Enrique’s class?” Inés’s frown deepened. “Enrique’s class is advanced level.”
I didn’t want to beg, but I would do what I had to do. “Please, Inés, let me try. I’ve come so far just to dance flamenco. Please don’t put me in the easy class. Let me try it. Just one class. Just let me do Monday, and if he says I’m not good enough, I’ll go back down to the other class. Please.”
Inés’s frown softened. She took a pen and crossed “beginners” off my form and wrote “advanced” over the top. “I’ll have to get Enrique’s permission. And if you can’t keep up with the group, you cannot stay in the class. But you can try on Monday.”
“Thank you!” I said. I wanted to hug her, but the wide, paper-strewn desk was between us. So instead I skipped happily down the stairs and out of the school. It wasn’t until I was halfway down the street that I realized what I’d done. In my effort to convince Inés that I could handle the advanced flamenco class, I’d forgotten that I couldn’t. They were doing triple turns in there, and I couldn’t even do one turn without falling over.
Maybe in Spain it would be different, I told myself. This was the other side of the world, after all. Maybe gravity would be more on my side here. Turning into the narrow side street that led back to Inés’s apartment, I looked both ways to make sure no one was coming, then leaned onto the ball of my right foot and spun around. I stumbled at the end, but that was because there was some gravel under my shoe. I tried again, going for a double turn this time. At the end of it I almost fell over. Third time’s a charm. I took a deep breath and turned again.
“Olé!”
I looked up and saw a man leaning down from an open window. I quickly straightened up and hurried away down the street. Once I’d turned the corner, I started to laugh. Okay, it was embarrassing, but I’d just had my first ever olé.