Flamenco’s origin is difficult to trace. Popularized in southern Spain, its beginnings have been tracked through northern Africa and India. Although modern forms of flamenco are often accused of commercialization, performed only for the sake of tourists, it hasn’t lost the level of provocative energy associated with it — and more often than not, a female dancer commands this energy, demanding the audience’s principal focus. “The woman stands up and says, ‘I don’t care. I have big boobs, and I can be a good mother,’” Jeap said. She carries herself erect, and with years of technique she is able to command strength and grace: her fingers and arms forge intricate patterns in the air. The dance gives the performer a powerful voice, and leading female dancers are touted for their technique as much as their advocating for women’s rights.

“It was an accident. I just wanted to find out what it was,” Jeap said, recalling an overpowering curiosity that led her to study Spanish dance. “[But] I didn’t have money. I didn’t have anything.” She was eventually forced to borrow money from a cousin to finance the course. “It was just a workshop for fun,” she conceded, “Thai students of many ages who were interested in dancing and wanted to be a professional dancer in the future.” Held in Bangkok, the course lasted three weeks for Jeap — though brief, it was enough time to leave its mark on her. “I feel like…” she hesitated, searching for the words in her native Thai and then their equivalent in English. “I didn’t know the word passion at that time, but I felt like I could bring some dark side out, which I had never shown while dancing.” When the course ended, she chased this feeling, ordering an instructional video from Spain so she could continue learning at home. “I learned by myself for a long time,” she said, recalling daily practice sessions that lasted hours, as she attempted to extract all she could from the mail order educational. A year passed like this, before the video wasn’t enough. “One day, I just felt like I wanted to dance in a big room with a mirror and wooden floor. So, I went around to check where I could rent.”

She found a space at Chiang Mai Ballet School, a local ballet studio. “It was perfect, but it was 500 THB [$18] an hour. Oh, so expensive,” Jeap said. “I couldn’t afford it.” Feeling defeated, she walked toward the exit, passing the director of the studio on her way out. The woman stopped her. Jeap told her story, anticipating a sympathetic ear and nothing more. The director nodded knowingly, and then surprised Jeap with an unprecedented offer. “She said she wanted to give me an audition to teach. I said, ‘oh, it is impossible.’” Requesting 10 days to prepare, Jeap returned a week and a half later. She performed for three minutes before she was offered a job.

Jeap speaks carefully about her first job as a dance teacher. The opportunity was so incidental —“I’d never been to Spain. I just learned from media and some teachers”—that it seemed divine, perhaps too good to be true. Her formal training was shaky. Although she was disciplined and practiced often, her progress as a student of a teleordered teacher was just that: generic and limited. It wasn’t enough. Jeap sighed as she recalled, “I had so many [technique] questions that I could not answer.” Feelings of inadequacy led to depression —“At that time I had no goal, so I felt so bored and upset” — and she decided it was time for a change. In 2003, she moved to Hungary to study flamenco. “I had many questions inside myself and could not answer. It made me feel bad. That’s why I decided to go to Hungary to study more.” When pressed further about her decision to move, Jeap hesitated at first, and then began to reference feelings of discontent. “I just wanted to be alone in a very difficult place,” she said. “Thai culture, we care so much about the social, what they will think about us. I just wanted to be free.”

Initially, she hoped to travel to Spain. But after discovering that flamenco was also popular in Hungary, a final comparison of the price of living convinced her. “My family was worried about me. [But] most people were happy for me and thought that I was brave.” She left for Budapest in September.

“I was crying every night,” Jeap said, remembering her first month in Hungary. “No one…”— she paused, suddenly uncertain —“…smiled at me.” She breathed, and a scene of disillusion seemed to hang in her face. “I found out that if you want to make friends in Hungary, you have to go first. [Hungarians] won’t open [up] to you.” It helped her to keep busy. “I was studying flamenco, learning the culture, people, a bit of language, checking out other kinds of dance performances and art,” she said, recounting her life in the Eastern European city. She threw herself into intensive study with Katalin Inhof, a Hungarian dancer who had studied flamenco in Spain. Attending class every day for two hours — one hour of technique, a second hour of choreography — Jeap returned home, only to train for several more hours. She stressed the physical demands of flamenco: “Your feet just like that”— she stomped furiously on the tiled floor of Lur Café — “nonstop for one hour. It’s like a very hard exercise.”

Jeap had expected to be able to find a job to help finance her lessons, but in pre-EU Hungary communication proved an insurmountable barrier. “I couldn’t speak Hungarian. So, it wasn’t what I expected — that I could just work. No. Impossible,” she said. After two months of study Jeap ran out of money, and she began to think about home. “I didn’t know I missed Thailand. But most of my night dreams were all about Thailand.” She readied herself to return.

“I went to my teacher and said, ‘I have to go home.’ I told her that I had to go back because I had no money.”

When I listen to the recording of my interview with Jeap, her voice is clear over the subtle whir of coffee grinder and chatter. You can hear glasses clinking as customers stir their iced coffees, then sip, talking in a way easily confused with song — Thai is a tonal language, and semantics is determined by a rise or a fall, a low note or a high note. But when Jeap begins to talk about the possibility of having to relinquish her dream, the background noise in the recording suddenly ceases, as if on cue. It is inexplicable; I would have remembered some emergency that caused all the customers to execute a mass exodus; but, no. Any listener will be convinced that the cafe’s customers suddenly hushed as to better hear her speak.

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