Martha Villa Martin (centre) dances on stage during a flamenco performance. Photo courtesy of Martha Villa Martin

Martha Villa Martin was 10 years old when she first enrolled in a flamenco class in a small town in the south of France. Her father wanted to bridge his Spanish heritage with his daughter’s French upbringing.

Almost 20 years later, Villa Martin’s love affair with this passionate dance has not faded. In fact, it’s gotten stronger.

“I will never get bored of flamenco,” says Villa Martin. “I could listen to it all day long. It connects my mind and my body and it helps me face life.”

But her connection with flamenco wasn’t always as strong. Months after enrolling, her teacher moved from the small town where Villa Martin was born and raised – leaving her to only dream about the dance.

In 2008 she decided to move to Canada. Villa Martin landed in the Yukon where a friend of hers was living and working, and after taking in Yukon and B.C., she decided she wanted to, once again, strap on some flamenco shoes and continue exploring Spain’s most revered dance.

“Flamenco is an art, a culture on its own. It is extremely interesting and you have to keep learning and practicing all your life,” says Villa Martin.

This is exactly what she has been doing all her life. Even during times when she was unable to practice and learn her passion, Villa Martin says she would always listen to the music and imagine, in her head, how she would move and how she would interpret the strumming of the guitar, the beats on the cajon – a small, square Afro-Peruvian drum – and the pulsating claps of her partners’ hands.

“I love the fact [that] we have to [persevere],” says Villa Martin. “I love the music, the cante, the guitar. The rhythm is absolutely fantastic. It’s something I’ll never forget.”

For the past year, Villa Martin has been a part of the Al Mozaico Flamenco Dance Academy, an organization that describes flamenco as having grown beyond the boundaries of Spain and now belongs to the world. Flamenco dance and music embodies universal and genuine human emotion, which transcends culture to touch the souls of all people, according to the group.

Rosario Ancer founded the Vancouver International Flamenco Festival in 1990. Photo courtesy of Vancouver International Flamenco Festival

This is a level of thinking that has led many other Vancouver-based dance academies to specialize in flamenco. It has even inspired the annual Vancouver International Flamenco Festival, an event now in its 23rd year. Founded by Mexican-born Rosario Ancer and her husband after moving to Vancouver in 1989, and following a long career as a flamenco dancer in Europe, Ancer says it only took her a few months to establish the festival in a small and thriving flamenco community in Vancouver.

On the website the festival is described as “growing from a single intimate evening performance in 1990 … to become Western Canada’s premiere flamenco event, presenting the best in international, Canadian and regional flamenco.”

Villa Martin is glad that a festival like this exists, and she says it complements an already strong community.

“[The] flamenco community has apparently grown a lot since [a] few years thanks to [a] few people who opened schools and brought their good spirit to Vancouver,” she says.

And she feels at home in Vancouver, a place where she can explore herself through a dance her father intended to use as a bridge to connect her with a part of her Spanish heritage.

Villa Martin says she feels supported and encouraged in her flamenco community.

“We are like a big family, the passion we share is very strong,” she says.

The Vancouver International Flamenco Festival runs Sept 17–23. Visit
www.vancouverflamencofestival.org