[From an interview with Morocco conducted by Dr. Barbara Sellers-Young, PhD at the request of the Oral History Archives of the Dance Collection of the Lincoln Center Library of/for the Performing Arts in New York City]

Barbara Sellers-Young: I’d like to begin this interview today to have you just describe your early experiences in learning to dance in New York City… and what led you to learn the dance, what started in that direction.

M: Well, I got into the field at all by accident through a Greek Orthodox priest, Father Spiro Avlonitis, who owned and ran a rehearsal studio at 318 West 57th Street in Manhattan. It was called Alexandro Dance Studios, and so we called him Alex, even though his real name was Spiro. He was an extremely eccentric character, but a very sweet and caring man. We became friendly because I was also Orthodox.

BSY: Orthodox?

M: Russian Orthodox. And so he found we had a common ground since I was probably the only one in the studios at the time. This is where I took my Flamenco classes (with a wonderful woman named Carmencita Lopez) and, later where the dance company I was with was rehearsing at the time (First with Curro & Olga Amaya, then Pepita Ortega & Goyo Reyes, then, at the time of this next occurrence, the Ballet Espanol Ximenez-Vargas). At that time it was not required by the union to pay us for rehearsal. They could get away with that then, in 1959, actually 1960.

He said, “You’re getting skinny.”

I said, “It’s hard to eat on no money”.

He: “Your parents will kill me if you die from starvation.”

Me: “Why should they kill you? You’re not the one who is starving me.”

He: “Look, I have a friend, a woman, she’s good woman, she’s opening a restaurant. They need dancers. Why don’t you go and see her and tell her I sent you. I’ll call her. And this is the address and you go there at this time, and blah, blah, blah.”

So, I go, with my guitarist, Diego Castellón, the brother of Sabicas, who, as we speak, is still alive and well, playing Flamenco guitar in New York City and hanging out at El Cid on West 15th Street. We show up: the woman looks at him and says,
“Is this your husband?”

“No.”

“Your manager?”

“No. He’s my guitarist.”

She says, “We have a guitarist.”

Now, here I am thinking in terms of Flamenco, so I say:
“Is he used to playing for dancers as well as singers?” (It’s a different way of playing if you’re playing for a flamenco singer or a dancer.)

She said, “Oh yes, he plays for both all night, all the time.”

“Does he know all the rhythms?”

“Yes.”

“If I change rhythm will he follow me and change rhythm?”

“Yes. He’s used to playing for dancers all the time.”

So, I say to Diego, “Well, I guess she doesn’t need a guitarist”,

and he said, “All right, I didn’t really want to work a steady job anyway.” And off he goes.

So she says, “Okay, you put on your uniform, show me what you do.”

I go downstairs and I change into the bata de cola, which is the dress with the long train that you kick around, and I come upstairs, and she says,
“What’s this?”

I’m thinking, “Well, it’s a restaurant, it was rather small, I didn’t see a stage…”, so I thought: “Maybe, if I’m dancing on the same level as the customers, she doesn’t want the bata de cola because she doesn’t want any dust kicked in their faces while they’re eating.”

“Okay,” I said. “I have the traje de montar, I have the riding suit that you wear for Farruca, or I have the dress with the ruffles with polka dots.”

She says to me, “Honey, we don’t want Spanish dancer. We want ‘bally’ dancer.”

I said, “I don’t do ballet, but I do know Escuela Bolera.” (Escuela Bolera is ballet with Spanish posture and castanets.)

She said, “No, honey, not Spanish dance, not ballette, belly dance.”

Me: What’s that?”

Her: “Sit, you watch.”

She tells this other woman to put on a costume, who was also there looking for a job. About fifteen minutes later, that other woman comes up. This poor puppy looked like Richard Nixon: pear-shaped face, five o’clock shadow and all. Plus she was built like a Christmas tree, where it went like bloop, tuck, bloop, tuck, in enlarging order from top to bottom. In addition, somebody had done a caesarian or appendectomy with a can opener or something. Then, on top of it, she couldn’t hold a rhythm if you put in a paper bag and gave it to her.

So, having more guts than brains, I said, “If I can’t do better than that, I’ll hand in my feet.”

One of the other women, who realized—because here I am sitting in this Flamenco costume, that I probably didn’t know my tail from a hole in the ground, said,
“Oh yeah, if you’re so smart I’ll lend you a costume.”

So, I go and I put on her costume. Now, I was fifty pounds lighter then than I am now, and I was built like a fourteen-year old boy from the waist up. The woman, whose costume it was, was very well endowed, so it took my socks, two rolls of toilet paper, and there was still a credibility gap. Plus I had the belt on backwards because I figured let me cover the front more than the back (What did I know?!?)…

I go out there and I totally didn’t know what I was doing, but I was a dancer, which showed, somehow or other….

The woman who owned the restaurant said, “You are a dancer. You are not a belly dancer, but you are a dancer. We need people who can dance. I give you the job for two weeks, you look, you learn, you get better, you keep the job. You don’t get better, thank you very much, goodbye.”

Got the job. I realized many years later that at that point there were a lot of restaurants that featured Oriental dancers, so almost anybody who could do what passed for dance then could get a steady job -- if Godzilla had a costume, she would have gotten the gig. But back then, there I was thinking, “Oh here I have so much talent and it shines through.” Right?!