My back pretty much recovered before the performance. But, I’m still boggled at being in the very same show as… my teacher? The brain will never compute that in a million years.
The senior professional dancers of the company (which included Ms Rosita) basically coached us through the fine art of performing for a public audience. Namely, screaming at us to smile and not look like we didn’t want to be there. I dunno about the others, but the thought of dancing any flamenco in public makes me all kinds of ill. It gets worse when half the audience consists mostly of the equivalent of the Associated Board of The Royal Schools of Music. Which we had to have tea and cake with after the show WAT. Clearly no one questioned my unfortunate history with the piano.
I did invite Carina, Sarah and mini-Sarah Ella to come along to watch us. If we messed up, at lease watching the awesomeness of the professionals would totally make up for it.
Except I didn’t count on them screaming and waving like escaped mental patients during the guajiras. They even liked our costumes!
Now Ella wants to do flamenco. If the fan I used didn’t belong to the academy, I would have totally given it to her. I was really glad they came though – their support meant a lot even though my head was going wtf at their screaming/waving.
It’s probably helped me take that small step back to getting my heart into flamenco again. Returning from Malaysia, I found not all of me was there – during syllabus classes I would follow the best I can but not bother to remember anything. Open classes were the same thing. For the performance, I had forced myself to fake it for the sake of my wonderful guajiras compadres.
Healing takes a lot of time, and I wish my flamenco had not suffered as a consequence. Thankfully I have time to catch up. That’s not to say everything is okay now. It’s about taking each day as they come, and hoping for the best.
