As the first American woman to become a professional matador, Raquel Martinez noticed early in her career that male spectators were often more outraged by her presence in the ring than were the bulls. "The beer cans and insults would come flying," Martinez, 49, recalls with a laugh. "But I made them eat their words."

Now she's teaching men—and a few women—her moves. In January, Martinez and two partners opened Santa Maria Bullring and School in tiny La Gloria, Texas. Students pay $950 for a weeklong course that includes lessons on footwork, sword handling and how to snap a 15-lb. red cape. "Raquel has so much charisma and knowledge," says Donald Decker, 65, a professional ballroom dancer from Kalamazoo, Mich., who has dreamed since boyhood of fighting bulls (killing them is illegal in the U.S.).

He won't be facing the real thing this time: Reaching that stage takes months of training. But that's beside the point, insists Martinez, who in 1981 became the third woman ever accepted by bullfighting's governing group, the Asociación de Matadores de Toros y Novillos. What matters is learning grace and courage. "Bullfighting is not a sport," she says, "it's an art."

Reared in San Diego by Mexican immigrant parents, Martinez (the divorced mother of a grown son) discovered that art at 18 on a trip to Tijuana. Since then she has tangled with 700 toros, surviving one goring and several tramplings. Her advice to would-be matadoras? "Fight like a man, but don't lose your femininity."