Atlantica - 01.04.2006, Side 42

40 AT L A N T I CA
wooden floors. Lola herself entered. She had pulled a long black skirt
over her jeans.
Sarah was now at the other end of the room from me (on purpose?)
and, it should be noted, is only 24. She had told me that while this was
a beginning class, beginning was a broad term. The Dane, after all, was
a beginner in Seville after a year’s training in Denmark. Most of the stu-
dents in my class had at least a few months under their belts.
At a few minutes past 8pm, eight of us were lined up, looking in the
mirror and waiting for Lola to pick a CD out in the corner of the room.
I was thrilled that I didn’t have to go it alone. True to what Monica at
Taller Flamenco had said, more than half the students were Japanese. I
stood in the back row, in my flat shoes, and waited.
A mellow guitar strummed out from the stereo, and Lola took her
position in front of the class. Head rolls. Right... left. Shoulder rolls.
Forward... back. Memories of childhood jazz classes were floating back.
This was no problem.
And then I suppose the inevitable happened. Some kind of routine
began. The class threw their arms in the air, stomped, and jutted their
hips in unison, scooting around the room to the music with Lola at the
helm. They really had been doing this for months. I tried to follow along,
but soon abandoned that notion and took a spot at the wall while this
went on for a few minutes.
Lucky for me, not only did a latecomer show up, empowering me
with a sense of seniority, but the rest of the class was spent breaking
down the individual moves within the routine. (It was hard to say if class
was going more slowly because a first-timer – yo – was present.) Lola
would show us some footwork or an arm position, we would imitate it
a few times, and she would ask us, “¿Sí o no? ¿Sí o no?”
“¡Sí!”
After seeing some moves, I found I could attempt the trademark fla-
menco twirl of the wrist, or I could get my arms or feet in the right place
at the right time, but none of this was going to happen together. I much
preferred watching Lola in the mirror than myself; she was graceful, and
fierce, and knew it.
At one point, before what I will call the stomping exercises, Lola left
the room to get an extra pair of her own shoes to lend to a student who
had been taking classes for a few months and, like me, was wearing
street shoes.
“BA! Ba dum dum DA! Ba dum dum DA!” She counted out the beat for us
and nine of us stomped as one. Or, at least, as two or three.
Once I found my rhythm – and I do mean my rhythm – I could gener-
ally follow along. Even in my flat shoes, I stomped, and even managed
to throw a hip around once in awhile.
“¿Mejor, no? ¿Muy clarito?” Lola would call, catching her own eye in the
mirror and checking her makeup between choosing new music.
“¡Sí!” It was great; I felt like my Spanish was improving and I was
becoming sexier with each firm plant of my shoe on the wooden floor.
It was like Lola was lending us a fraction of her mojo for the hour – this
mix of women from Japan, the United States, Germany, and Spain who
had come here to bask in her lifestyle.
The hour went quickly, and I felt like I was really getting the hang of
it by the time class was over. Afterwards, I went to the register to pay
where the friendly receptionist sat with Juan Polvillo himself, the owner
and, judging from the posters in the hall, something of a flamenco
celebrity. Lola said something to me in Spanish, and the receptionist
translated. “She asks if you’ve done flamenco before?”
Lola looked at me with a wide, innocent smile. Not especially con-
vincing, but I appreciated the flattery, as she likely knew I would. “No,
no,” I waved my hand, trying not to smile. “Never before.” She gave the
receptionist a who-woulda-thought look, like I had been flamenco-ing
forever.
I very happily forked over my 12 euros for the lesson, bid everyone
adios, and BA! Ba dum dum DA-ed! out into the waiting city. It may not
have been an impromptu show in a shadowy back alley bodega, watch-
ing locals who had been learning the art form since childhood. But if
my mood, walking back to the hotel through Seville’s neighborhood
squares, past the clink and clamor of tapas bars, wasn’t sparked with
duende, I don’t know what is. a
This summer, Icelandair flies once a week to Barcelona and Madrid from Keflavík.
SEVILLAa
034-40SevilleAtl306.indd 40 23.4.2006 22:38:01