Living Memory

Oral Histories Archive

First-person accounts from the artists who built, expanded, and sustained flamenco in San Antonio and across Texas. These conversations preserve voices, memories, and artistic lineages that might otherwise disappear from the historical record.

Voices of Texas Flamenco

The archive centers lived experience: family histories, creative choices, cultural transmission, and the changing conditions in which flamenco has been practiced. Interviews are presented as historical documents as well as personal testimony.

Teresa Champion, pioneering San Antonio flamenco dancer and teacher

San Antonio Flamenco History

Teresa Champion

Teresa Champion recounts a life at the center of San Antonio’s flamenco history—from her return from Mexico City in 1954 and performances with guitarist Willie “El Curro” Champion to decades of teaching through the Teresa Champion Dance Academy. Her memories illuminate how family, migration, nightlife, community institutions, and artistic discipline created a distinctly San Antonio flamenco tradition.

photo: unknown

Olivia Chacón, artistic director of A’lante Flamenco

Contemporary Texas Flamenco

Olivia Chacón

Olivia Chacón reflects on building A’lante Flamenco in Austin and developing original evening-length works such as Desplazados and Prophecies. The conversation traces her approach to choreography, ensemble building, displacement, and the challenge of creating contemporary flamenco in Texas while remaining accountable to the form’s musical and cultural foundations.

photo: Kim Espinoza

Jackie La Morena Rodriguez-Navar, San Antonio flamenco dancer

Tablao and Community Memory

Jackie “La Morena” Rodriguez-Navar

Jackie “La Morena” Rodriguez-Navar reflects on more than two decades of flamenco performance in San Antonio, including her formative work at Carmen’s de la Calle and collaborations with dancers, singers, and guitarists across the city. Her story documents the intimacy of the tablao, the evolution of a personal performance voice, and the relationships that keep a local flamenco community alive.

Interview recording forthcoming. This entry establishes the interview within the archive while final media preparation is completed.

photo:Matt Bynum

About the Archive

WeFlamenco Fest’s oral-history initiative documents the artists, educators, musicians, organizers, and cultural spaces that shaped flamenco in Texas. The archive will continue to grow as interviews are recorded, restored, transcribed, and contextualized for future audiences.

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