Sevillana Summer

Verano de Sevillanas

I came to Sevilla to learn flamenco. I stayed for her.

"Your posture is wrong," Elena said on my first day. "You're dancing like an American tourist."

"I am an American tourist."

"Then stop being one." She circled me like a predator. "Flamenco is Spanish in your soul, not your passport. Find the fire or go home."

Elena taught the summer intensive—six hours a day, six days a week, no mercy. She'd danced professionally in Madrid before an injury ended her career. Now she turned tourists into dancers, one brutal correction at a time.

"Again," she'd say when my arms flagged. "Again." When my feet stumbled. "Again." Until I collapsed.

But I kept coming back.

"Why do you push so hard?" I asked one evening.

"Because I see something in you." Her eyes were intense. "Something worth pushing."

By the fourth week, the other students had given up. It was just me in the studio, with Elena drilling footwork until my shoes wore through.

"You're better alone," she observed. "No one watching. No one judging."

"I'm not used to being watched."

"In flamenco, you must be watched. The dance is a conversation." She stood in front of me. "Dance with me. Not for the mirror. For me."

Dancing with Elena was different. Her hands guided mine, her body showed me how to move, her eyes held mine through every step.

"There," she breathed when I finally hit the rhythm. "You feel it now."

"I feel something."

"What?"

"Alive." I was breathing hard. "More alive than I've felt in years."

"That's duende." She smiled. "The spirit of flamenco. It's found you."

She kissed me in the studio after class, with the summer heat pressing through the windows and castanets scattered across the floor.

"This isn't professional," she said against my lips.

"You already told me I'm not a tourist."

"You're my student."

"For two more weeks." I pulled her closer. "Then what will I be?"

"Anything you want."

We spent those two weeks learning more than dance. I learned the curves of her body, the sounds she made, the way her guard dropped when we were alone.

"Stay," she said the night before my flight.

"I have a life back home."

"Do you? Or do you have obligations you've mistaken for a life?"

I didn't have an answer.

I went home. Lasted three months.

"What are you doing here?" Elena asked when I appeared at her studio door in October.

"You were right. I had obligations, not a life." I dropped my bags. "I sold everything. I'm staying. Teach me for real this time."

"That's insane."

"Flamenco is insane. We both know that."

She kissed me right there, in front of the new batch of summer students.

"Class is dismissed," she announced. "My partner is home."

I never became a professional dancer—my body started too late for that. But I teach beginners now, in the studio Elena and I run together.

"Find the fire," I tell them. "Or go home."

"You sound like me," Elena says from the doorway.

"I learned from the best."

"The best at teaching?"

"The best at everything."

Sevillana summer—where fire is found, duende is discovered, and love dances forever.