August 26, 1999, Thursday

We are busy polishing for the show. We keep going over things and fine tuning them and making them better. Concha doesn’t seem to be worried about some of the things that I see in the video and try to change. However other flaws she is helping me to change, to turn into a strength. She is cleaning my footwork some more, bringing out the accents and the matisse. She has added my head to certain footwork steps. We’re working with everything, feet, head, body, arms, hands, directions, sound. It is a fun but arduous stage we are in.

Things changed a little when Salao got mad at me for wearing my costume in class which Concha had asked me to do. I brought it to him wet Tuesday after class and he said that it would not be a new and wonderful costume by the time I returned to Callifornia if I rehearsed in it two hours a day. He said it is made to be used for a ten minute dance no more than once a day. He was aghast that I had had it on and sweated in it for so many hours already. But, I did need to get used to the skirt and to find out that it had been too long for me. The skirt flares much lower than I am used to and is much harder to grab and lift without bending at the waist. Now I am getting the hang of it. So yesterday and today I stayed away from my costume and I am glad. Now we’re back to working on the polishing. When I wore the costume we ran through a lot of class like rehearsals. That was good and useful. Now we are again picking it apart and polishing it more finely. It is also more comfortable in this heat to not dance in long sleeved, long skirted, tight fitting polyester. It has been like a sauna, as I wrote earlier, especially in my new black Siguiriyas costume. Yes, it is much cooler to dance in my old purple tank top and my long black Indian pleated skirt. (My Menkes skirt is locked in Menkes’ until the first of September when they come back from vacation).

Today, finally, it was a bit cooler, with maybe a hint of fall in the air. Tonight as we walked to our favorite little restaurant the air was again balmy with a hint of a breeze, totally comfortable and pleasant. I wore my new rhinestone thongs which I am breaking in. They’re not nearly as comfortable as my two pairs of sandals but they look a lot prettier and I think when they are broken in they should be comfortable, I hope. Freddie tells me that I look more and more beautiful every day and I think it is my happiness beaming out of me. He looks great to me too. His face is relaxed even though he is still practicing almost all the time instead of resting a lot. Playing music is good for his soul as dance is for mine. So is our relationship good for our souls. Being in love is such a wonderful feeling. It colors everything. Freddie is such a supportive person in so many ways. Living all this time in our one room, large though it may be compared to others here, we are able to let each other be and support that in each other. We don’t bicker and we talk about any things that bother us so it never gets big. And we always try to come up with solutions. It’s so easy. It is so easy for us to live together, to be together. And it is so much fun. The Siguiriyas is better because of our interaction both with each other and with Concha. That energy blows life into my dance. Flamenco is nothing with only good technique without the feeling and interaction among the performers. Without the interaction it is hard to concentrate on all aspects, the singing and the guitar and the dance, at once. For me, usually the dancing, if not keyed into the music, takes my attention away from the singing and the guitar. When the show really has interaction then I can see the whole at once and it all makes internal sense. The interaction between the three of us is a strong point in our upcoming performance. It will make anything we do much better.

Yesterday morning after I did the buleras Concha called all the people who were working in or just at the Carboneria up to the stage to watch me and to be my “publico” (public). Luis and others commented on the wonderful comps and the manner in which I danced it. Luis several times in the last few days has commented on how much he likes my buleras. And now we are polishing even more. I actually learned a few more buleras things which are too new to do in our show but which are fun to do and I am getting to learn more buleras which I wanted.

The rings. Concha’s compadre, Agustin, who is a jeweler in Chiclana came up to meet us and to see the photos of the rings we liked in Madrid. He is a nice man and we had a good feeling about him. He was wearing a ring he had made. We will go down to Chiclana, which is near Cadiz, with Concha and probably Rafael in the beginning of September, when businesses open up again. I still can’t believe how almost everything is shut down for two weeks to a month in August. It’s frustrating when you are leaving in the middle of September. But, the rings. We are now thinking about what we really want and Freddie came up with a beautiful design that includes an engagement ring. We are still deciding if he will have an engagement ring too (why be sexist?) or if his engagement ring will be made as part of the wedding band. His design is beautiful and I am wondering if we should mail a copy to Agustin ahead of our visit. I will ask Concha in the morning. Salao is going to show me how to fix and is going to gather and sew my mantilla to the comb for the wedding. I will bring them to him tomorrow. He has the coral mantoncita I ordered on Tuesday that will go with the plastic coral earrings and comb I bought from him when I picked up my exquisite red dress. Now Concha is talking about my changing into it for my buleras but I don’t think that is really practical. We’ll see. Salao orders from a factory and can get things much cheaper, but I don’t get to select from what catches my eye unless he has it or a sample laying around, which he sometimes does. He got mad at me again the other day for buying some mantons on Calle Sierpes. “But those are for tourists” he said with horrified disgust. Concha explained that she had sent me there because she too didn’t know, when we decided that I needed the mantoncita to match my purple shoes, that Salao could get things much cheaper from the factory. Now we know. I will also get a rhinestone (tiara style) wedding crown from him. Freddie and I have very similar taste, luckily and we both love beautiful bejeweled things. I was thinking of other wedding rings in my family and for me it is a case of my taste taking after my grandmother, Frances, my mother’s mother. Her jewelry was exquisite, full of precious gems and pearls and gold. I lost and gave away some of it in the sixties shortly after she died. (Ah, the stupidity and ignorance of youth. I did not know how irreplaceable that jewelry was. But that is another story.) My mother lost the bulk of the best jewelry when she moved from Venice, California to Israel in the early seventies. (And she was in her forties or fifties.) So now I begin to recreate in my own way a collection of beautiful things, including fairy tale jewelry, that Grandma Frances had created in her life. Our wedding rings will be like our home, full of beautiful things. We are like kids in a candy store. At this stage in our lives it is time to give ourselves beautiful things to feast our eyes on and to enjoy, to go with our beautiful love, and the beautiful life we have created together. And so we travel on the trail of the wedding rings, looking for what we want to wear for the rest of our lives, what we want to symbolize the love between us that shines more brilliantly than the gold, diamonds and emeralds and rubies that may adorn us.

September 8, 1999

For my own healing and immense growth I have worked hard on the performance aspect of Flamenco as well as the choreography and the technique. We have the big show tomorrow night here in Sevilla, Spain at La Carboneria. My love Freddie will be playing the guitar and my dance teacher, Concha Vargas, will be singing for me, for all of us. The three of us are totally connected after all this time of intensive work together. Freddie’s guitar teacher, Carlos Heredia, will video the show for us. He did a rehearsal video today and it turned out well. I will wear my new black dress and dance the Siguiriyas, calling in the spirits with my palmas (rhythmical hand clapping) as I rise from my seat and walk to the front of the stage. Then as Concha continues the palmas for me from her seat, I echo the rhythm more with my feet, building the intensity into a rhythmical turn and a dead stop. As I sharply move my foot and my body from angle to diagonal angle without moving from where I am standing, I call in the guitar and it’s music moves me again to another angle, a pose, waiting for the cante (singing) which comes, singing from the depths of gypsy pain, of human suffering. I start to move, my hands again call in the spirits as they pull the energy up from the earth and into my body and through my body and into the sky. In the dance, I feel what Concha sings. At times I fight intensely with my feet, while at other times I am inside myself. The words of the cante also speak about the joy my child’s eyes give me and that starts to release the pain. By the end of the dance I have triumphed and I am excited and happy, like a “bomb exploding” Concha says.

I had to think a lot about doing this sad, heavy dance when I am so happy. But the sadness part I have lived through and understand and now I am at the end of the dance, happy and triumphant and full of hope. And the Siguiriyas is hauntingly beautiful.

Then I do a Buleras, which is a happy, joking kind of dance done a lot at fiestas. I have learned to sing four buleras’ and I now understand the words of almost all of what Concha sings and which pueblo they are from. Freddie plays a short guitar solo to start the Siguiriyas and his guitar is clean and beautiful and very moving.

I just wish I could stay and learn more. We joke about putting Concha, and now Carlos, in our suitcases and taking them home with us. They would both love to visit.

But for now, we leave on the 15th, in time for my father’s 80th birthday. But we do plan to return for a shorter time of this intensive and rewarding work.

September 9, 1999

The show went well and Carlos did a magnificent job of videoing it. The morning of the show Nacha and May sent us a big bouquet of red carnations with a loving note congratulating us on our Debut en la Carboneria and wishing us luck, saying they wished that we would become the most famous couple in the world of Flamenco. After the show, as we were taking our bows, Pili, Carlos’s wife, came up to the stage and presented us with another large and beautiful bouquet of flowers. Our show was packed with people, friends, and friends of friends and we did a good job. The audience loved it. Luis kept commenting how wonderful my buleras was. Salao, the renowned costume maker of the Flamenco elite, came with a friend and commented on how impressed he was that my comps was perfect, that I never once went out of comps, and how hard that was to do in a Siguiriyas. The Siguiriyas rhythm is thought to be the most difficult in Flamenco. Other people were amazed that artists from California could do what we did (because we’re not Spanish!). Freddie played beautifully, as I had expected. Concha sang well and as I danced I listened to both Concha and Freddie and was inspired and supported. At the beginning of the show I dedicated our show to Paco Lira, the amazing owner of the Carboneria and our gracious host and supporter of Flamenco, and also to Concha Vargas, my amazing dance teacher without whose skill and support I would not have been able to achieve this dramatic accomplishment in my dance.

Now we enter the end stage of our trip here and we have to think about packing it up. But we have done what we came to do and it wouldn’t have happened like this without all our consistent hard work and obsession and passion. Of course now we will have to return to Spain for more but we will have an idea of what to expect and how we can again achieve what we want. We have made many wonderful friends here and we feel a part of this warm and supportive community. When my sister and brother-in-law Lainey and Ken were here they commented on how it seemed that we knew everybody. And it does seem like that. So often, no matter where we are in Sevilla, we are walking down the street and see someone we know. It is a great feeling and amazes us too. And these people, these friends, are wonderfully supportive and enthusiastic. We will be sad to leave them. If we win the lottery, “ojal” (god willing), I want to charter a plane to bring everyone to our wedding. But at least we plan to send a video of the wedding back to Spain. So now we have to see what will fit into our suitcases and what we have to mail home. We’ll be deciding what to bring on the plane, what to send through, all the details we have been able to live without for this time period. This stage brings sadness, the transition from one life style back to another. But we know that we have a another beautiful world to enter when we return. Our beautiful house and land are waiting for us, flowers blooming, when we return. Our family and friends in California are also waiting for us and we know that it will feel good to see them and to share more of our experiences with them at home.

And then again, a part of Spain will come to us at home. Paco Lira, our wonderful host at la Carboneria, his best Saturnino who played guitar for La Nia de los Peines with Chris Carnes, and Pepe Romero, a renowned Flamenco piano player will come with our friend Luis Agujeta to visit and to stay at our home at the beginning of October. Their purpose for this trip will be to see Chris Carnes who is very ill, as I have written. That is quite a tribute to Chris, who deserves it. And it will be great for us to have some of our friends from Spain staying at our home. We look forward to returning the hospitality to Paco that he has so graciously given to us here.

Flamenco Romantico
Marianna Gabriel & Federico Mejia