Farewell to Andalucia, Spain, the land of Flamenco.

Hello all!

Well, my 5-week Grand Tour is just about over, and very soon I will be winging it home, ready to face lots of work and the challenges of a new year. I am spending the last week in Spain, visiting Morocco, then 2 more days in Paris, then I fly home. Thank you to those of you who followed my travels both here on my blog and/or on facebook.

In honour of Spain where we've spent a total of 2 weeks this visit, I thought I'd post about flamenco. Andalucia, the region where we've been staying, is credited with being the birthplace of flamenco. I caught a wonderful show in Madrid on a previous visit, and this time I was fortunate enough to catch a show here at the resort on the Costa del Sol. The music is wonderful, the costumes are so unique and colourful, the dancing is so energetic, made more so by the throbbing, thrumming guitars and boot slamming. It brought back memories of a story I wrote for RomanticFridayWriters for a prompt in 2012 - The Perfect 9.5, which I decided to re-post today with a few edits. I hope you enjoy my story, inspired by a visit to Madrid in 2011.

The Perfect Dance

The women danced. Their dresses, bodices decorated with jewels, shimmered in the semi-dark. The movements began slowly, the dancers moving like fish floating across a luminescent ocean. Soon the slow dance became a crescendo of whirling, twirling patterns across the barn-like room. This was excellence, the best of the best.

Jose cast his eyes to the stage. The musicians stood tall, their faces gleaming, sweat dripping from their black curls. They played the trembling guitars, stroking the strings with a thrumming like a thousand fluttering winged birds, softer now, then louder. Their white shirts were blue under the light, their tight black high-waisted trousers gleamed and shone. Cowboy boots were glittering glass as they stamped to their own beat.

Mirrored lights swirled over the dancers, silvering the sequins on the flounces of skirts as the frills vibrated with the dancers’ steps. It was a kaleidoscope of red, purple, yellow and white, checks, polka dots, stripes. Jose counted the heavy, clacking beats as the black dancing pumps met the timber floor, shaking the room. A hundred shoes in perfect time as the dancers followed the thrum of the five flamenco guitars.

But there was only one dancer on the floor who set his blood boiling.

Her auburn ringlets, her lithe body clad in a slash of brightest red, her waist an invitation for a man to span with joined fingers. His Angelique. Her lower body kicked yards of frills, revealing slim legs in satiny black stockings. Her arms held above her head, the clicking fingers, were a perfect sculpture of beauty and tension. His eyes followed her every movement. How could the judges fault her? Did she miss a beat? No, every call of the sobbing guitars was met, every whirl perfection, every stamping foot in perfect timing.

Source*

Soon it was only a competition between two – Angelique and a fiery redhead who looked imperiously at the judge’s table each time she shimmied by, daring them to eliminate her. She was perfection herself, her body screamed. Find a fault if you dare! I’m the perfect 10!

Angelique was asked to leave the floor. How could they send her away? Only he saw the tear she brushed from her eye. He half stood in his seat, mortified.

‘9.5!’ The judges score his Angelique.

‘They might give you a less than perfect score,’ he thought to himself, ‘but to me you’re the perfect 10’.

Photo my own, taken in Madrid 2011.

Please join me and several other enthusiastic writers/authors, who will be posting to the NEW BEGINNINGS prompt at Write...Edit...Publish on January 22 - a bit earlier or later is fine. Sign up in my sidebar, or visit Write...Edit...Publish.