Spanish dancer—Spanische Tänzerin
Rocío Molina and Yerai Cortés, guitar, in the Matadero
12 December 2021
She strides to the lip of the stage
Till erect before the lean and seated figure of man and guitar,
Her gaze unseeing directed to us in the shadows in the darkened hall.
She stretches down an arm that seems to move of its own volition
Wie Schlange die erschrecken
And twists quickly at the wrist as she says softly
— Esto no es cualquier cosa.
Suddenly the heels and soles of her black boots
Clatter in accelerating rhythm
As the tall thin guitar man poised but silent,
Watches.
Her small lithe body pauses, erect and proud,
An instant before the first loud chord
Rings from the guitar.
And now the pulses of guitar and those of her quick movements
Burst free of all polite constraint.
She twists, she bends, she rolls upon the floor,
She leaps upon a bench,
The guitar echoing her sudden and abrupt movements.
She opens then knots her blouse, she hikes her skirt
Above her knee,
She whirls and bends and clacks her heels
Against the resounding boards.
And all at once she curls herself so small
To disappear beneath the shadow
Of a platform like a bridge, and the voice of the guitar,
Now in a deep and rapid aural dance,
Fills alone the abandoned space.
The lean young man and his bright full-bellied instrument
Now on a bench stage left,
Begin again a surging and subsiding sound
Of chordés and trills and loud plucked strings
When she, bereft of skirt and clad in light and flowing trousers
And cape-like coat
Emerges from her grotto
To resume her whirling dialogue with the guitar,
Answering to and provoking its new cadences.
Until the music and her supple unstill form
Twirl to their foreseen end.