I'll get to the caracoles, which go along with today's letra, in a minute, but first some background...
I told you I'd be visiting Barcelona to study with David Romero.
I told you I'd been wanting to take classes from him for years.
And here I am in Barcelona
Finalment!
(Catalán. We are in Barcelona after all.)
Studying with David.
Stefani is here too. She's been with me since the Flamenco Tour. You know I no longer believe in traveling to Spain to study all by myself. At least for the time being.
But back to David
I love him. I figured I would, but you never know. He's friends with Ricardo, but that hasn't always worked in my favor.
And I love our classes.
Outside of class David is pretty tranquilo.
But in class, a trabajar! To work!
We laugh and have fun.
But, oh my goodness, we work hard.
Sweaty hard.
Which may seem obvious considering we're dancing. But I don't sweat a lot. And I've been sweating much more than usual for me. Ricardo has always told me I need to sweat more. He sometimes gets mad at me. Not regular mad. Spanish mad which is different. He says I'm not working hard enough when I don't sweat. He says I need to dance it and dance it and dance it and dance it. And then I will sweat. He says I stop and think too much ... Tiene razón.
So, yeah, I'm sweating in class with David
The first two days were tough. Emotionally, that is. I felt stupid and like I should just quit because I was a horrible dancer and there was no point. Even though I loved what he was teaching us.
But by the third day, something shifted.
And I started to feel inspirada...
To keep working.
To keep dancing.
To keep trying.
Tonight many body parts are hurting
But I feel like dancing Tangos de Málaga, that's what we're working on with David.
After class this evening I took a shower and went for a walk around Barcelona, and as I walked I just kept wishing I could go dance some more.
I've decided I'm going to try not to flip out if the feeling goes away. I should know by now it comes and goes and that's fine. It's okay if I don't feel inspirada every single day.
But today, in Barcelona, I do
Ole.
And so, today's letra.
It's one that David has been singing to us in class.
You see, Stefani and I are taking semi-privates, kind of our own personal workshop with him. And we asked him to teach us some Tangos de Málaga. Honestly, I'm quite certain I would have been happy with whatever he gave us.
He sings for us while we dance. And he's pretty good. At first I was surprised, but then, once I heard his story, it made a lot of sense. You'll find out a bit about it at the end of the post.
But first...
Qué ganas tengo que llegue
el mes de los caracoles
para comprarle a mi niña
unos zapatos de colores
How excited I am
for snail season to arrive
so that I can buy for my little girl
some colorful shoes
The guy in the song is excited for snail season. Because then he can sell them and make enough money to buy his niña some shoes!
Flamenco Dancer David Romero
About David
I want to tell you more about him. About his teaching. About his dancing.
You can see him in the picture. I took that today while we were having a coffee before class. Sometimes he likes to meet to tomar algo before we dance.
He's been dancing since he was three years old. He grew up going to peñas and hearing flamenco all of the time. He's from Barcelona, but his family is from Andalucía. His brother is a guitarist, his mom sings (for fun). He began working professionally when he was fourteen. And he's got lots of stories.
Watch the interview I did with him here.
Comments
Are you feeling inspired lately? When you're not, what do you do? Do you accept it? Do you feel badly? Do you search for it? You can leave a comment below.
