In the moments before she begins to dance, performer and instructor Daniela Zermeño-Sanchez always closes her eyes. “I let go of the audience, and the kids, what I’m wearing, how much I’m sweating, and how tired I am,” said the 28-year-old of her process. “I just really try to put myself into that moment of the music and the emotion, and that’s what brings out a performance in me.” On the morning of Sunday, July 23, Zermeño-Sanchez did just that to the cante of Jesus Montoya, the Grammy-winning Spanish gypsy flamenco singer and composer, as his powerful voice modulated through emotion.
Zermeño-Sanchez, along with the 26 young women who make up Zermeño Dance Academy’s Live Music program, were rehearsing with Montoya’s band live for the first time this year, having prepared intensively since school let out and the so-called Fiesta season began in June. Later that day, they danced for a sold-out audience during Fiesta in the Grove, which took place at Elings Park and raised funds to help defray the cost of hiring Montoya’s group of world-renowned musicians, which includes Japanese flamenco guitarist José Tanaka, Venezuelan percussionist Diego Alvarez Muñoz, and American flamenco dancer and palmera Misuda Cohen. The band will accompany the Live Music program and the Zermeño Dance Academy Company as they perform three to four times every day of the Old Spanish Days Fiesta.
Dancing since she was a toddler, Zermeño-Sanchez was only 3 years old when she took her first flamenco class at Cruz Dance & Entertainment. Within five years, she was traveling to Los Angeles to study the classical Spanish dance form more intensively, and by 9, she and her older brother, Ryan Zermeño, were touring professionally as a child prodigy duo, charming audiences in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Texas, and Mexico.