I Want to be a Flamenco Dancer

Yes, it's true.  I want to be a flamenco dancer.  This is not an overnight desire.  I've had it for years, but watching those elegant and exotic women dance around the stage at the WCU Performing Arts Center last night brought that old desire back to boiling point. (See preceding post.)  I have to face reality, though.  I'm 67 years old.  I have an ankle with metal plates embedded in it.  (Long story.  I wrote an essay about it 15 years ago for Carolina Quarterly.  You can look it up....maybe.) I have never taken any dancing lessons in my life, except for a few weeks of ballet with a good friend back when my daughter was in grade school.  I wanted to take dancing lessons during my childhood, but my parents were afraid I'd get polio and thus waste the money paid out for dance instruction.

I took piano lessons instead. That way I could sit in my wheel chair and play Mozart.   I wrote a poem about that.  It's in Catching Light.  (You can definitely look that one up!)

So, I'm a frustrated wannabe dancer.  Also singer.  Visual artist.   Gourmet cook.  That's a long enough list, and my time in this particular life is growing short.  Given that grave reality, what else to do but go to google?  Google doth provide.  Flamenco clothing. Shoes.  And cd's.   I'm going to order a pair of black stompers and a long ruffled skirt.  Also Flamenco for Beginners.   Will I write more poems about flamenco dancing once I don my gypsy duds?   I hope so.

I believe that a gypsy skirt and shoes can re-awaken my creative spirit.  Rev up my energy that seems so often sapped by the demands of aging.  The family losses.  The early morning glimpses in the mirror.  The aching joints.  I am absolutely sure that listening to flamenco guitar and wailing cante jondo can cause the hair on my arms to rise up, the goose bumps gather, the flesh itself come alive, wanting to sing back and back and back.

So, don't laugh at my quest for gypsy shoes and skirts.   My longing for alegrias, seguiryas, soleares.  The erotic rhythms of desire and wild, raging sorrow.   Isn't that what all of us long for, whether we are singing along with Dolly Parton, Renee Fleming (trying to!!) or Nina Simone?