Artists

Tamara Adira is a San Antonio dancer, choreographer, performance artist, and founder and artistic director of Arte y Pasión. Since 2010, she has conceived and directed more than 30 original teatro-flamenco productions, using flamenco to explore migration, memory, protest, healing, and human rights while sustaining artistic exchange between Texas and Spain.

Anna Alicia is a San Antonio flamenco dancer active in local tablao performances and community cultural events. Her appearances with singers, guitarists, and fellow dancers contribute to the intimate live-performance tradition that sustains flamenco across the city.

Pilar Andújar is a dancer, choreographer, and singer from Almoradí, Alicante. Trained in Spanish dance, flamenco, classical dance, and performing arts, she has toured in the United States with Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana and worked in Austin as a performer and choreographer. Her interdisciplinary practice also includes acting, music, castanets, percussion, and original stage projects.

Antonio Arrebola is a Málaga-born flamenco dancer trained in flamenco, classical ballet, and Spanish classical dance. A professional since his teens, he performed internationally before becoming part of San Antonio’s flamenco community, where he appeared with Arte y Pasión in productions including Flamencos and performed in local tablaos.

Christopher Arispe is a San Antonio–born composer, arranger, educator, and flamenco and classical guitarist. He studied with José Perello and learned flamenco through Willie “El Curro” Champion and Los Flamencos de San Antonio. A former resident guitarist at Las Canarias at La Mansión del Rio, he also performs as a soloist, accompanist, and founding member of Dos Mundos Guitar Duo.

Steven “Steve” Arispe is a San Antonio flamenco guitarist and one of the musicians who carries forward the teaching of Willie “El Curro” Champion. Arispe began studying flamenco as a teenager under Chayito Champion, Teresa Champion, and El Curro, later accompanying Los Flamencos de San Antonio, Alma Flamenco, the Guadalupe Dance Company, and San Antonio Parks and Recreation productions including FlamencOlé.

Matt Bynum is a San Antonio photographer whose images have documented flamenco, dance, live music, and cultural life across the city. His work has appeared in coverage of Carmens de la Calle, WeFlamenco Fest, Raíces de Arte Español, and local arts reporting, preserving performers, venues, and community moments that might otherwise exist only in memory. His photographs form an important visual record of San Antonio flamenco in the 2010s and beyond.

Solangel “Lali” Calix is a Honduran-born flamenco and Spanish classical dancer known for her exceptional castanet technique. Trained in Madrid and Seville, she established Alianza Flamenca New Orleans and taught at the New Orleans School of Ballet. Now based in Houston, she continues to perform, teach, and tour. Calix was also part of Arte y Pasión’s Generaciones (2010), alongside Timo Lozano, Teo Morca, José Perelló, Francisco “Yiyi” Orozco, and Tamara Saj.

Sources: Solero Flamenco; San Antonio Express-News/mySA; San Antonio Report; Houston Spanish and Flamenco Festival.

Yvonne Castaño is a San Antonio flamenco dancer whose work is rooted in the city’s live performance community. She has performed with Arte y Pasión, appeared in Tamara Adira’s Angel of Gravity, and shared the stage at Carmens de la Calle with dancers and musicians from across the region. Her performances reflect the collaborative, community-based tradition that continues to sustain flamenco in San Antonio.

Isaí Chacón is a flamenco guitarist, singer, composer, educator, and music director active in Central Texas. After developing his musical practice in Texas, he spent several years in Madrid performing and touring with flamenco artists. He later co-founded A’lante Flamenco with Olivia Chacón and has helped shape the company’s musical voice through guitar, cante, composition, and accompaniment.

Olivia Chacón is a San Antonio–born flamenco dancer, choreographer, teacher, and artistic director of A’lante Flamenco. After five years of study and performance in Sevilla and Madrid, she returned to Austin, founded Flamencura Music & Dance in 2010, and formed A’lante in 2011. Her original productions connect traditional flamenco practice with contemporary storytelling.

Elsa Champion is included in the WeFlamenco Fest archive as part of San Antonio’s extended Champion flamenco lineage. Her entry preserves her connection to a family whose dancers, musicians, teachers, and cultural leaders have played an important role in the development and transmission of flamenco in San Antonio.

Josie Champion is a San Antonio flamenco dancer, teacher, studio director, and organizer whose work spans performance, education, and cultural exchange. She appears in the archival record performing at the 1976 Texas Folklife Festival and later operated Josie Champion Dance Studios. In 2000, she brought influential San Antonio-born flamenco artist La Presy back to the city for an extended series of workshops, helping transmit choreography and flamenco practice to another generation of local dancers.

Rosalinda “Chayito” Champion is a San Antonio flamenco singer, dancer, teacher, and director of Los Flamencos de San Antonio. The daughter of Texas flamenco pioneers Teresa and Willie “El Curro” Champion, she has performed internationally while preserving her family’s artistic legacy. She was inducted into the San Antonio Women’s Hall of Fame in 2024.

Willie “El Curro” Champion (1933–2012) was a San Antonio flamenco guitarist whose career helped establish live flamenco as part of the city’s cultural identity. He performed with Teresa Champion, toured internationally with José Greco, appeared in John Wayne’s The Alamo, and played for nearly four decades at La Mansión del Rio. Curro’s legacy also lives through the guitarists he taught and influenced, especially Steven “Steve” Arispe and Alejandro Herrera, who carried his approach to flamenco accompaniment onto San Antonio stages after his death.

Annette Champion-Flores is a San Antonio dancer, educator, and artistic director of the Teresa Champion Dance Academy. A member of the Champion family, she continues a multigenerational dance legacy rooted in San Antonio. Through teaching and performance, she helps carry forward the family’s contribution to the city’s dance community and its history of flamenco and Spanish dance.

Celia Corrales is a flamenco singer from El Puerto de Santa María, Cádiz, who grew up in a flamenco family and began singing as a child. Now based in Austin, she performs with A’lante Flamenco and collaborates with artists across Texas. Her appearances include Arte y Pasión’s Sonidos de Libertad.

Fabian Alejandro Diaz is a San Antonio mixed-media artist, designer, and maker whose practice spans textiles, accessories, masks, jewelry, painting, photography, and sculptural adornment. For WeFlamenco Fest’s 2017 flamenco fashion program, he created elaborate headpieces shown alongside designs by Lisa Perello and Kyndra Vigil, bringing his distinctive approach to adornment into conversation with flamenco dress and performance.

España Viva is a performance ensemble dedicated to sharing Spanish dance and flamenco through cultural festivals, community events, and live stage presentations. Its work helps connect audiences with the breadth and vitality of Spain’s performance traditions.

José Cortés Fernández is a flamenco singer born in the south of France into a Gitano family from Almería. He began performing as a child in Jerez de la Frontera and developed his cante alongside leading flamenco artists before moving to the United States in 2010. His U.S. career has included collaborations with dancers and musicians across the country, including Texas appearances with artists such as Illeana Gómez and Alejandro Pais Iriart.

Stephan Gaeth is a San Antonio dancer, choreographer, actor, director, performance artist, and teaching artist. A longtime figure in the city’s multidisciplinary performance community, he became a key collaborator with Arte y Pasión in 2014, performing with Tamara Adira in Angel of Gravity and contributing to later experimental works that brought modern dance, flamenco, visual art, and theater into conversation.

Laura Garrigues

Based in Corpus Christi, Laura Garrigues appeared as a featured guest soloist in Pasos y Pasiones at the Cameo Theatre during the second San Antonio Flamenco Fest in 2011. Her participation expanded the festival beyond its local ensembles, connecting dancers from across South Texas with San Antonio’s longstanding municipal flamenco program.

Historical source: San Antonio Express-News, “Flamenco Fest returns, spreads out” (2011).

Gerry Gibbs is a Grammy-nominated jazz drummer, composer, arranger, producer, and bandleader who played a formative role in the early years of Carmens de la Calle. Gibbs has written that he helped Paula Sullivan open the original club in 2001, then became a central force in its jazz programming, using his national connections to bring leading musicians to San Antonio. His work helped establish Carmens as an intimate live-music destination that would also become an important home for flamenco in the city.

Illeana Gómez is a flamenco dancer with roots in Laredo and an MFA in Dance. After extensive study with artists including Juana Amaya, Farruquito, Carmen Ledesma, and Alfonso Losa, she established a professional career in Spain and has performed in Madrid’s tablaos as well as on stages in the United States.

Guillermo “Guille” González is a flamenco singer active in the Texas flamenco community and associated with Sabor Flamenco. As a cantaor, he has collaborated with dancers, guitarists, and companies in live tablao and stage performances, contributing a strong vocal presence to the regional flamenco scene.

Antonio Granjero is a Jerez-born flamenco dancer, choreographer, and director who helped reshape San Antonio’s professional flamenco scene after relocating there with Estefanía Ramirez. Together they established EntreFlamenco in San Antonio, presenting productions including Flamenco Para 4 Estaciones, Del Sur, Flamenc@s, and Aire. He later continued EntreFlamenco in Santa Fe and was nominated for a Bessie Award for outstanding performance.

Matthew Guerra is a San Antonio flamenco dancer selected as a 2026 Texas Folklife apprentice in Spanish flamenco dance. Working one-on-one with mentor Genevieve Obregón, he studied traditional tablao practice and a percussive zapateado style over eight months. Their collaboration culminated in Sol y Sombra, a public showcase celebrating the transmission of flamenco from mentor to apprentice.