How high school led me to this very moment

It’s no secret that my interests changed vastly between high school and college. In high school, I was a Spanish-obsessed competitive dancer who enjoyed playing the violin in the orchestra and planned on becoming an English as a Second Language teacher. Tonight, I fulfilled my 18-year-old self’s every dream in one three-hour setting. How’s that for efficiency?

I’ve been blessed here to be assigned a roommate, Lyndsey, who is a Music and Spanish major at Bethel College, a small Christian school in Indiana. It’s almost disturbing how many interests we have in common, really.  Anyway, when our teacher told us she was going to see Carmen the next night in the bullring, and that there were still tickets available, the two of us FREAKED OUT. I mean, there was squealing, beaming, and slightly-irrational money-spending happening. But, hey, we were going to see Carmen performed in Sevilla!  Lyndsey was additionally excited because it would be her first opera.

Well, she’ll still have to go to her first opera, because this was a reworked Flamenco piece that told the story through dance and guitars, except for the few times someone sang, Arabic chant-style, in Spanish. BUT IT WAS AWESOME. So Sevillano. My high-school self totally missed a calling in life. All of my high-school passions came together in this rendition of Carmen: dance, Andalucía, and, well, Carmen. 

Therefore, the #1 thank-you of the night goes to my orchestra teacher, Mr. Beck, for being obsessed with the story of Carmen and re-telling it to us the entire time we were rehearsing to play the music. I was even able to re-tell the story before the thing started to the Irish family sitting behind us, which was awesome. I got her son’s (who lives in Boston, not the one in Sevilla with her) number, and I’m supposed to look him up when I get back. Ah, life.

Thank-you #2 goes to Sra. Meacham and her introduction of Andalucía to my Spanish class my junior year. I remember learning about Sevilla and Córdoba, reading poems by Federico García Lorca, and falling in love with the gitano culture. I felt like I was channeling her the whole night. Also, thanks for showing me pictures of the Spanish priest outfit, so that when they showed up at the end of the show I knew it wasn’t the KKK out to lynch Carmen about 2 minutes too late.

Last, but by no means in any universe least, thank-you #3 goes to Ms. Janell, my dance teacher, who, well, taught me dance (duh). But for real--I was watching the dancers’ feet yesterday, and I felt like I was studying a new style of tap dance. I actually was figuring it out as we went along!  I definitely know a few steps of flamenco now--and OH MY GOODNESS do I want to learn more.  I missed a calling in life: I want to be a flamenco dancer in Carmen in Seville. Surrounded by cultura sevillana, guitars, and dancing? Yes, please.

I won’t lie--we were surprised, to say the least, that it wasn’t an opera. We laughed about it the whole time. We hadn’t read the poster--we just saw Carmen and RAN to the ticket office.  About five minutes in to the policeman’s first dance, Lyndsey leaned over and said “shouldn’t they have sung by now?” Yeah, we were those Americans. But it didn’t change our impression of how FREAKING AWESOME it all was.

Oh, but it doesn’t end there!  You’d think the night couldn’t get any weirder?  You didn’t stay through intermission. Animals entertained us. Well, people and animals. First, a guy on a horse came out and the horse danced around for awhile. When BHoff took us to the Saratoga Race Track when I was in middle School, I thought that the dressage stuff was the weirdest thing ever and a complete waste of time. It’s so much cooler when you have a torreador brass band playing in the background. Weird to see a horse dance sideways in a circle?  Yes. Cooler when you’re in Spain, and thousands of people around you love it?  Absolutely.

But ye of little faith, that was only the preamble to the intermission!  What can beat a dancing horse?  TRY A BULL. No, the bull wasn’t prancing, but the bull came out and about 5 different torreadors teased him for awhile. They’d run out right in front of him, he’d charge, they’d sprint away and jump over the edge of the ring, the bull’d collide into the ring. These guys are ridiculous, and I totally get it the hype. It gives the audience a rush of adrenaline to watch the torreadors flirt with their lives.

fun fact: bullfighting is related to flamenco in Spain. First, both originated in Sevilla. But more interestingly, bullfighting is a reworked version of flamenco. In the bullfight, the torreador plays the “female,” while the bull is the “male.” In both (as in life, according to Sevillanos), the female flirts with, seduces, and evades the male, until she eventually kills him.

 Andalucía in a nutshell, ladies and gentlemen.

Is it too early to call my greatest night here?  Awesome--I look forward to more crazy, unexpected times.