An exciting display of rhythmic passion is coming to the Clayoquot Sound Community Theatre.
Fin de Fiesta Flamenco kicked off a 30-show Canadian tour on Sunday in Duncan and the ensemble will hit Nanaimo and Chemainus before performing in Tofino on Wednesday.
The group, which features vocalist Alejandro Mendia, guitarist Dennis Duffin, flautist Lara Wong, percussionist David Sampaulo and dancer Lia Grainger, has been together since 2012 and spent the past year putting their Fin de Fiesta tour together in Seville, Italy.
“Flamenco is really about rhythm and about everyone being together because it’s traditionally been an improvised art form from the street,” Grainger told the Westerly. “When it’s really beautiful is when you have moments where it’s not totally perfectly planned, but it all comes together.”
Microphones on the floor help audiences hear Grainger’s movements.
“Flamenco dancing is a really percussive kind of dance. It’s a lot of rhythmic footwork,” she said. “Musically, it’s incredibly complex and intricate with exciting rhythms. It’s the kind of art form that, as artists, you leave everything out there on stage.”
She said the ensemble is excited to engage a Tofitian audience for the first time.
“Even though it’s a polished, finished show, we still love to keep that fun party vibe and I feel like people in Tofino would probably enjoy that,” she said.
The show starts at 7:30 p.m. and tickets are available at Tofino’s Mermaid Tales Bookshop and Ucluelet’s Blackberry Cove Marketplace.
Fin de Fiesta Flamenco has been performing together since 2012.
Grainger was living in Vancouver in 2005 when she saw a flamenco dancer for the first time and fell so deeply in love with the expressive movements that she left her job as a journalist to devote herself full-time to the art form and quickly moved to Seville, despite being unable to speak the language.
“I got totally obsessed and moved to Spain a year later,” she said explaining that Seville is a hot spot for flamenco artists. “I’ve been really in love with it ever since.”
She said finding her way around her new surroundings was tough, but she remained focused on her dreams.
“Feeling like an outsider was difficult sometimes. It’s taken a long time to feel more comfortable there: learning to speak, being able to make jokes with people. I’m also 6’1” and I’m blonde, so I’m so obvious. I can’t blend in at all,” she said. “With time, people totally accept you. It’s a tight, closed community in the flamenco world but, if you stick around long enough, they let you in.”
She encourages anyone with a passion to “go for it.”
“Why not do it? The worst thing that could happen is it doesn’t work out. I don’t understand why people are afraid of failure,” she said. “What I’m doing didn’t work out all the time at all. I took a lot of risks and it didn’t always happen, but, I think, if you know you want to be doing it, you can’t lose. Even if we have a show and not a lot of people come, or if something doesn’t go well, we’re still doing flamenco and, at the end of the day, that’s what we want to be doing.”