Dance of Death : Obsession drives Honey Anne Haskin to compete in a man’s world: the bullfighting ring.

Spaniards say that a worm, un gusano , gets inside you. Once you are a matador, you will always be.

Honey Anne Haskin has spent more than a decade performing in small plazas from Mexico to Spain. Woman bullfighters are rare and not kindly looked upon in the hyper-macho tradition of tauromachy. Haskin--a gringa who dares to call herself Ana de Los Angeles in the ring--has labored in the sport’s minor leagues, never receiving the credit she insists she deserves.

A couple years ago, this curious woman of wide build and pinpoint eyes tried to walk away. She returned to the United States, to her grandmother’s house in Sherman Oaks, and managed apartment buildings for a living.

But somewhere in the distance, a trumpet played, and the worm turned. The band struck up pasodoble , the music signifying the corrida , the fight. Ana de Los Angeles could not turn a deaf ear.

“The presence of the bull,” she said, explaining her attraction to the sport. “His power and speed, and his breath as he whooshes past.”

Spain’s bullfighting season begins in March. Ana de Los Angeles, at age 35, will be there.

In any story about bullfighting, it is imperative to speak of the bull. El toro bravo. An animal is killed for the enjoyment of a paying crowd.

“It’s immoral,” said Lyn Sherwood, editor of Clarin magazine, an English-language publication in San Diego that chronicles the fights. As often happens with aficionados , Sherwood follows this apology with a curious justification, a dissertation on tradition.

“Without the ceremony, it would be nothing but a bloody rodeo that has no reason to exist,” Sherwood said. “It’s like the Catholic Church. The only thing that redeems the Catholic Church is the ceremony.”

The pageant is certainly vital to matadors. The dressing in the suit of lights. The dedication of the fight to a local dignitary. But, it seems, there is something more. The worm. The obsession.

Sherwood and other tauromachy historians insist that Manolete, revered as the greatest matador in history, offered his belly to the charging toro on that fatal afternoon in 1947 because he had reached the pinnacle of his sport and had nothing left to live for.

Which brings us back to Haskin.

“It’s really all my parents’ fault,” she said.

They were aficionados who took their young daughter across the border to Tijuana on Sundays. They were divorced by the time Haskin graduated from high school. Not knowing what to do with her future, she moved to Mexico City with her mother and earned money by photographing matadors.

“I gradually started saying, ‘I want to do this myself,’ ” she recalled.

She began by fighting calves on ranches, then became a matadora de novillos , a minor leaguer fighting young bulls.

“She stood in there,” said Bill Robinson, who formerly wrote bullfight reviews for The San Diego Union. “In other words, she had the courage to stand still while she passed the bulls. That’s rare.”

But Mexican promoters and officials did not see fit to give her many fights or make her a full matadora . She went to Spain where, since 1981, she has fought 20-30 times a season. Front-line matadors appear three times as often. She has made enough money to support herself, but not much more.

“Honey Haskin has been around for a bunch of years and has gone absolutely nowhere,” Sherwood said. “I don’t know what she has or doesn’t have, but I do know she has been involved for 15 years and has gained no attention from anybody.”

Yet she perseveres.

Tauromachy has been called the “dance of death.” Aesthetics are crucial--the arch of the matador’s back and angle of the shoulders, the staccato steps taken in this violent waltz.

“But in dance, you don’t have a wild animal trying to kill you,” Haskin said.

So bravery is equally vital. The matador will stand directly before the bull and will execute close passes so that the matador’s body brushes against the charging animal. The matador will do everything possible to maximize the danger.

“A blend of style and survival,” Haskin said.

The fight is held in three stages. First, like a boxer, the matador executes sweeping passes to size up the bull. Does it charge straight? How close must the cape be before the bull sees it? The picadors enter the ring on horseback and jab pike poles into the animal’s back and shoulders.

Next, another set of attendants plunge barbed darts called banderillas into the bull’s shoulders in an exercise of grisly practicality--the neck muscles weaken so the bull will keep his head low, so the matador can, in the third act, plunge his sword between the animal’s shoulder blades.

The temperament of this violent 20-minute ritual is as variable as that of the bull. Sometimes the toro will swing its horns wildly and refuse to follow the sweep of the cape. This is how matadors get gored.

“You just hang on and try to defend yourself,” Haskin said. “You’re not trying to do anything aesthetic, you’re just trying to get out alive.”

Other times, the bull has a “noble” charge, clean and straight. At such times, the Spanish say, the matador is “drunk with the bull,” executing each pass--each veronica and gaonera --gracefully.

Said Haskin: “You have this feeling of overwhelming inspiration and happiness. You can hear the rhythm of the Oles! “

It is the thrill of the moment that Haskin craves. It is a habit she cannot kick. She tried that one time, returning to Los Angeles in 1987, staying here a couple seasons.

“I’m like anyone doing the thing they love most,” she said. “That’s why, in the end, I always go back.”

Obsession drives Honey Anne Haskin to compete in a man’s world: the bullfighting ring.