Feel It

Day 81

Thursday

Surprises are always around the corner, if you go exploring you’ll find them. Who knew, there is a weekly flamenco show 1 street over at a local bar?? Crowding in with the other Malaguenos and visiting tourists sipping strong dark wine we waited for the troupe to take to the diminutive stage. Like striking black stallions the dancers paraded through the crowd up to the front, the guitarist and the singer following in the space of their grand entrance. Picking out tragic melodies the guitarist began to entice the dancers to stomp out their dramatic story, twirling hands drew the attention of the audience upwards until a stamp of the foot plummeted our gaze to the floor and in the quiet pause that followed eyes floated back to the face of the dancer who was channeling another world full of strong emotions that played across her face and caused her chest to rise in the exertion of the movements. Like a call and response, the man and the woman took turns moving about the floor to a rhythm they felt deeply, so deeply they needed no choreography, just the sound of the guitar and the voice of the singer to guide their bodies. Flamenco is an intense experience. It leaves your spirit quiet, overwhelmed by the experience. It leaves you wanting to ask “why? Why such pain in the face of the dancer, in the voice of the singer, in the melody of the guitar?” but those dark eyes don’t let you in, rather hands twirl and spin to distract you from the face, the skirt flies and you’ve been deceived by the drama.

Flamenco serves as a suitable metaphor for my time here in Spain. There’s a rhythm to life here that I haven’t been quick to pick up on and I’ve been too timid to make a big show of my own feelings, of my own experiences. But to dance you have to feel it. Really truly profoundly feel it.