Linda Vega is dedicated to keeping the flamenco flame burning.
The choreographer and owner of Linda Vega Dance Studio has trained hundreds of dancers over the past three decades, including 36 young women and girls who have been named Spirit or Junior Spirit of Fiesta.
That number includes this year’s Spirit of Fiesta, 17-year-old Jesalyn Contreras-McCollum.
“I pass on all my knowledge to my students. Everything that’s inside me, I give to my students,” Vega said.
She can still recall the emotional moment that she saw flamenco dancers, performing in a Renaissance fair in northern California.
“I just started crying my eyes out, it just touched me so deeply. It just struck a huge passion in me,” Vega said.
After dancing from a young age, she decided to move to Spain when she was 22 years old to study and perform flamenco.
“I went to Spain in 1973 and I lived there for 10 years,” she said.
Her flamenco career continued in the United States with performing and teaching in Orange County and Los Angeles.
Living in Orange County, owning dance studios in the Los Angeles area, and giving private lessons in Santa Barbara was difficult.
“I was actually teaching at three dance studios at the time,” Vega said.
“There were a couple of girls from Santa Barbara that wanted to come down and study private lessons with me,” she recalled, and her first and second Spirit of Fiesta winners, in 1988 and 1989, led her to open a dance studio in Santa Barbara.
“Now we have well over 100 students. We started out with like 10 students,” she said.
Now in her studio’s 31st year, she has seen the auditions for Spirit and Junior Spirit become more competitive through time.
“The level of technique and performance has grown and grown and grown over the years,” Vega said, adding that many, many hours of practice are required. “I couldn’t even count them because everyone differs,” she said.
“During Fiesta week, we are on many, many different stages,” Vega said. “So we have like two and a half full weeks of performing.”
The stage at Paseo Nuevo is donated to the Linda Vega Dance Studio but it’s shared with everyone.
The students in her company, Flamenco Santa Barbara, will perform with a music group from Spain this year.
“We have five musicians coming in this Fiesta. Two singers, two guitarists and one percussionist,” Vega said.
One attraction for the Spaniards is Santa Barbara’s architecture, which reminds them of home.
“There’s something about Santa Barbara that feels very comfortable to the Spaniards,” Vega said.
Some of her favorite events during Old Spanish Days are La Primavera, Fiesta Ranchera, and La Recepción del Presidente.
“Opening night at the mission is maybe the most important night of all for my dancers because you just can’t compare the opening of the mission with anything else. It’s magical,” Vega said.
She hopes her students continue to love and practice the pure flamenco dance form and to understand it at a deeper level.
“My desire always is to teach my students really well and then give them wings to fly,” Vega said. “I’m very, very blessed by God to be able to do my passion over all these years.”
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