‘A once-in-a-lifetime experience’

After almost 10 years of “dreaming” to take the UTRGV Ballet Español to train in Spain, Sonia Gómez, artistic director of the ballet took four members to the Centro de Arte Flamenco y Danza Española Amor de Dios in Madrid from Aug. 10 through 19.

“I wanted my students to have that opportunity,” she said. “It was such a satisfying moment to see their smiles; they were priceless. And to see them learning and to see them, just having that. That experience, for me, was huge.”

Gómez studies at the Amor de Dios institute as a young dancer.

“Many years ago, I studied there as a young person,” she said. “Every summer, I would stay for two, three months. So this was my first time back after a long time, and it was very nostalgic. And I had a lot of wonderful memories and remembered so many things.”

The group traveled with the help of the Center for Latin American Arts, the Dance Department and the College of Fine Arts at UTRGV.

Dance seniors Daniel Garcia, Matthew Guerra, and Jennifer Jimenez, plus mechanical engineering senior Vivian Franco were selected by Gómez, a lecturer in the Dance Department.

Only four out of 12 members of the ballet were selected for this opportunity.

“I told them a year in advance,” Gómez said. “Those that are going to Spain are going to be those that I see come to class on time … remembering and knowing what we worked on last time and showing some dedication and real interest, not just coming to come.” 

The artistic director said she invited two dance graduate students to the trip to Spain, Odalys Villagran and Tirzah Claus.

The Center for Latin American Arts, the College of Fine Arts and the Dance Department sponsored the flights and hotel for the members of the ballet. The graduate students paid out of pocket for the trip.

“The dean’s office provided a scholarship of $600 each for their food,” Gómez said. “They were responsible for their own food, they were responsible for their own whatever they wanted to buy. … I took them to buy flamenco shoes, flamenco skirts, you know, all of that. They were so excited.”

She said she was excited for the group to train at the flamenco institute.

“Amor de Dios is like the Hall of Fame of flamenco,” Gómez said. “There’s no other flamenco dance institute [or] art institute that exists in the world. They’re the only ones that exist in terms of how it’s set up. The details that make it unique are this: it is a building with so many different dance studios of all sizes, and the people that teach in that center are selected specifically.” 

Gómez said she was happy Joaquin San Juan, director of Centro de Arte Flamenco y Danza Española Amor de Dios gave a lecture to the members of the ballet.

“He’s been running Amor de Dios for 30 years,” she said. “I managed to have him give a lecture to my students, which was a big deal. He knows from the inception of Amor de Dios to what’s happened now.”

Franco said training in the institute felt like “a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

“This trip made me consider wanting to move over to Spain once I’m done with my degree,” she said. “It was a certainly beautiful experience to be able to learn more about what we do and learn, like why we do it and the culture behind it.”

Gómez said the purpose of the trip was for the members to train in the “best flamenco institute.”

“From 10 a.m. to about 2:30 p.m. we had, like, three different dance instructors,” Franco said. “And so it was just like nonstop from those hours. We were just there taking classes working on different techniques, different styles of dance from all those different instructors.”

The students paid out of pocket for the classes in the institute. For the whole week of classes, Franco said she paid around $500.

“The classes alone were kind of a lot just because we were getting to, like, the best institute,” she said. “Amor de Dios is like the best flamenco school that you can go to. So just those classes alone was a lot of money that we had to save up.”

Guerra said his experience in Spain “was very surreal.”

“It has helped me in my own way of finding who I am as a performer,” he said. “Seeing all these different types of performers, I learned there’s no specific way to do flamenco. … So seeing all these different types really helped me find what I like and what I could potentially work towards.”

During their time in Spain, the group visited La Puerta de Toledo to perform a dance they do in UTRGV.

“The song was called ‘La Puerta de Toledo,’” Guerra said. “So we wanted to signify that we were there, that we actually got to go see the place the song was talking about [and] do the dance that we do. It just made the experience kind of, like, a bonding moment for all of us.”

Franco recommends the UTRGV community to look into study abroad programs.

“I would say, just take advantage of every single opportunity that you get,” she said. “Just taking advantage of the opportunities always. Because you never know if it’s ever gonna show up again, and so I think this is one of those opportunities.”