Late in the summer of 2024, sitting around a campfire on my favourite cliff top, I met a beautiful woman named Shelley; she had bright eyes, dark skin and long white afro hair. We talked about art and travel and she told me about a flamenco festival that she goes to every year in the south of Spain.
She spoke of how in Jerez, the Gitanos (Roma community) and the Payo (non-Roma comminity) are unusually interconnected, flamenco acting as a bridge between the communities, and how many people visit the city to both learn and celebrate the dance through the year. This connectedness and celebration peaks during the Festival de Jerez in Spring time.

She described bodegas falling silent as Gitano families walk in, dressed in black, dripping with gold; men and women fiercely dancing flamenco to intense guitar and song; watchers on with tears rolling down their cheeks. She talked of trees full of oranges and late night parties on the streets.

I was obsessed. I was hungry for a long-form documentary project and this one felt perfect. Learning Spanish, building relationships with the Gitano, visiting their homes, many trips over the years, barrels of sherry, tons of oranges.

Needless to say, I booked our tickets for the following spring.

In between that late summer and the next spring, I attended Siân Davey’s Creative Body Process Course. I love Siân’s work and had gained so much confidence and insight from a short mentorship the previous spring with her.
The course was five days long on the magical Dartington Estate not far from home. My grandmother had done many courses on the same estate and I felt her with me as I tentatively stepped into deep personal work. We swam in the river each morning, frost crunching under our bare feet, we connected with nature and with each other and with ourselves.

I left with my heart and soul stretched wide open. My most inner self blinded by the sunlight but somehow knowing exactly which direction I was heading in. I remember stopping at the supermarket on the way home to buy myself flowers, a gift and a promise of care to my tender self.

Six weeks later, I was in Jerez. Cobbled streets, clear blue skies, white walls, trees full of oranges and time to think.

I knew that I felt different than I had before the course. The fire that I had felt on the cliff top back in the summer had dwindled. It wasn’t worrying me - there was a new knowing deep down that seemed to be sticking around, but I was curious about where the spinning compass was guiding me.

As I walked through the streets wondering where my heart was heading, I felt a visceral full body transition. Like I was walking through a portal from one dimension to the next with no way back.

The full body transition was knowing that this story, these streets, the flamenco dance, these oranges - they weren’t my story to tell. None of this belonged to me.
More importantly was the clear knowing that I did have a story to tell.
My story.
This feeling washed through me as if I was swimming in that freezing river again, shocking, liberating, completely thrilling.

It makes me a little sad to reflect on this now, to think how much I didn’t believe that I had a story before. There are a lot of hang-ups attached - questions of belonging and of identity - I’m working on it.

There were no revelations about what my story really was sadly, but I knew that whatever it was, I was inside it. There was a quiet confidence that said, ‘hold tight, listen, focus.’ Those feelings live in me now, that clarity and confidence has stayed. Slowly slowly, my voice is coming.

Back to Jerez - I stopped searching out a story and I played.
I played with colour, contrast, shapes and light. I sat back and was completely inspired by all of the humans I saw, so deeply and fiercely in their own story. Men and women and children consumed by music and dance, possessed by their heritage and culture. It was mesmerising. Many tears rolled down my face. I was still obsessed, by them but this time also myself.

On our last evening we went to a small and very popular sherry bodega, we queued in the last of the sun along the wall outside. We met a dark haired woman with her husband and two small children. They had travelled from across Spain for the festival. “Do you dance?” she asked me. I told her no and she explained that she was learning, trying to carve out time from everything else life asks of her, to learn and practice and enjoy, she told me how important it was to her. She was envious of our ability to be there without our kids, it’s true, I was very glad to be there without them this time.
We made it into the bar and ordered cold Manzanillas straight from the barrel and slices of jamon, fuck I love Spain so much. Because the bar was small they had a mirror positioned so that you could watch the dancing from wherever you were.

The bodega was heaving and as the dancing began, the woman’s partner said goodbye and took their kids home. I leant against the wall, half watching the dancing in the mirror, half watching the dark haired woman watch the dancing. Allowed for a brief time to fully sink into her own curiosity, her own passion.
These women reflecting back to me, this desire and belief and commitment.

For all of the photos that I took in Jerez, it is these that are my favourites.
The woman in the bar, and the photos that I took of myself in the misty mirror of our apartment.
It wasn’t the story that I was looking for, but it was certainly the one I needed.