About two years ago, I was persuaded to go to an adult beginners’ flamenco class. And let me be clear. Convincing me to dance requires the kind of persuasion usually reserved for people signing up to climb Everest or adopt three rescue alpacas. It was no mean feat. Mostly because my feet are often mean. They’re arthritic, which is part of the problem, but they’re also actively rebellious. They have a well-documented history of mischief. And to compound matters, I have the proverbial two left ones. So, yes, I approached flamenco with trepidation, and a vague sense that my dignity might be endangered.

As it turns out, I don’t really need a beginners’ class. No, that would be far too ambitious. What I require is a remedial course for frumpy, middle-aged women with no sense of rhythm, a class that perhaps exists only in the imagination of a wannabe. I am, in a word, terrible. I have less talent than an old hat shoved into the back of a cupboard. But perhaps I exaggerate. Yes, I am giving myself far too much credit.

Yet, somehow, I love it. I love the twirls in my red-and-black skirt, the intoxicating rhythms, the dramatic flourish of castanets and fans. I am, against all odds, enamoured with the duende, the mysterious, magnetic force that embodies raw passion, creative energy, and intense emotion. The word itself is untranslatable, but it is the feeling that compels your body to express what the mind cannot articulate. It’s a force that rises from deep within the soul and gives way to spontaneous emotion that overwhelms the body and forces me to dance the Sevillanas or the Farruca. And it’s the duende that (momentarily) makes me less terrible.

But I digress.

Keeping up with other beginners is impossible without some serious technological wizardry. YouTube has become my patient, unflinching tutor. In class, we practise footwork slowly, then faster, then at full speed. For me, “full speed” might as well be warp drive. So, at home, I slow videos down to a snail’s pace, master that, then accelerate by infinitesimal increments, until I can almost, occasionally, sort of keep pace with the music.

And this has made me a better English teacher.

Teaching English always seemed a natural choice. I love literature, I’m fastidious about grammar, and I adore a captive audience. Words have always flowed easily for me, which is both a blessing and a curse. I tend to forget that, for many pupils, English is as baffling and infuriating as flamenco is for me.

For my pupils, mastering English can feel like mastering a complicated dance. Every rule must be learned, and every skill practised until it becomes instinct. I have learnt to break everything down into tiny, digestible steps. I have learnt to celebrate the smallest victories like the triumphant semicolon, the perfectly balanced paragraph, or the elusive subjunctive, finally tamed. I have learnt patience, humility, and the joy of laughing at oneself when the metaphorical footwork goes spectacularly wrong. And sometimes, I even stumble over my own feet when I teach a little too enthusiastically.

Teaching, I have realised, is in many ways its own kind of choreography. The classroom is a stage; lessons are the music; pupils, the dancers. I guide, I step aside, I improvise, and occasionally I trip over my own feet, but always with the hope that the rhythm will catch, that the steps will stick, and that the dance of language will somehow be shared. English is a tango, a flamenco, a waltz of words, and the art is not in perfection but in connection, in engagement, in the shared joy of learning together.

And just as in my flamenco classes, mastery is not the point. Engagement is. Stumbling, persevering, and finding delight in the process… that is where the magic happens. There is duende in teaching, too. It lies in the sparkle of comprehension in a pupil’s eyes, or in the tiny victories that make all the painstaking lesson prep worthwhile.

So yes, I have two left feet. But my pupils benefit from both of them. And if I can use them to teach split infinitives and the comma splice error, then it’s all worthwhile.