Spanish dance traditions cannot be understood only through what is seen in the theatre.
For Deanna Blacher, Spanish dance was also something to be discovered in villages, celebrations, local music, traditional dress and dances passed from one generation to another.
Discovering that world meant travelling beyond Spain’s major cultural centres and into communities far removed from the tourist trail.
During an intensive period of study in Spain, Deanna studied Jota with the renowned dancer and choreographer Pedro Azorín and undertook extensive study with the celebrated folklorist Juanjo Linares.
The experience took her far beyond the dance studio.
She remembers rising at four o’clock on winter mornings to catch a five o’clock bus or train, travelling to places from Cuenca to Burgos, Huelva and Segovia, and accompanying Linares into outlying communities to research the folklore and traditional dances found there.
What she encountered helped deepen an understanding that would remain central to her work for decades:
Spanish dance does not exist apart from the people who created it.
Beyond the Tourist’s Spain
For a dancer studying in Spain, the great schools, teachers and theatres offered an extraordinary education. But another Spain existed beyond the studio — one where dance remained closely connected to place, community and everyday life.
Spain’s traditional dances developed across regions with distinct histories, music, costumes and customs. The dances of one community could be quite different from those found hundreds of kilometres away, reflecting the people and places from which they emerged.
For Deanna, travelling into regional Spain offered the opportunity to encounter those traditions closer to their source.
These were not simply dances to be learned as sequences of steps. They belonged to communities. Their rhythms, gestures and character were connected to celebrations, local music and traditions that had been passed from one generation to the next.
Seeing that world firsthand offered something a dance studio alone could not provide: context.
It meant beginning to understand not only how a traditional dance was performed, but why it looked, sounded and felt the way it did.
Learning Jota with Pedro Azorín
Among the teachers who helped deepen Deanna’s understanding of Spain’s regional dance traditions was Pedro Azorín, a respected dancer, choreographer and authority on the Jota.
The Jota is one of Spain’s best-known traditional dance forms, with regional variations found across the country. Although particularly associated with Aragón, its music and dance developed distinctive characteristics in different communities, making it an important part of Spain’s wider folk-dance tradition.
For Deanna, studying Jota with Azorín was about more than learning another style of Spanish dance. It offered a closer encounter with a tradition shaped by regional identity, musical character and generations of dancers.
Azorín’s own work demonstrated how traditional dance could be brought to the stage while retaining its connection to its cultural origins. His celebrated Jota Aragón, created in the 1970s, would become an enduring work in the repertoire of Spanish dance.
This balance — respecting the roots of a traditional dance while understanding how it could live in performance — would become increasingly important as Deanna’s own knowledge of Spanish dance expanded.
But another teacher would take that exploration even further, beyond formal lessons and into the communities where Spain’s folk traditions had been preserved.
Juanjo Linares and the Search for Living Folklore
If Pedro Azorín helped Deanna explore the Jota as a living Spanish dance tradition, her work with Juanjo Linares opened an even wider door into the world of Spanish folklore.
Linares devoted much of his life to researching, preserving and teaching the traditional dances of Spain. His interest extended far beyond choreography for the stage. He sought to understand dances within the communities from which they came — their music, customs, regional character and the people who kept those traditions alive.
Deanna undertook an extensive period of study with Linares in Spain. But some of the most valuable lessons did not take place in a conventional dance studio.
She had the rare opportunity to accompany him as he travelled to outlying towns and villages, researching the folklore and folk-dance traditions of communities away from the usual tourist routes.
It was a very different kind of dance education.
Rather than encountering a regional dance after it had already been arranged for a classroom or theatre, Deanna could observe the broader culture from which the dance had emerged.
The journey revealed the relationship between dance and place: how music, movement, customs and community could combine to give a regional tradition its particular character.
It also meant travelling — sometimes at decidedly unglamorous hours.
The 4 A.M. Journeys
The pursuit of traditional Spanish dance was not always glamorous.
Deanna vividly remembers rising at four o’clock in the depths of winter so that she could catch a five o’clock bus or train. The destination might be Cuenca, Burgos, Huelva, Segovia or another community where there was something to discover about the traditions of the region.
These journeys took her into a Spain quite different from the one most visitors encountered.
Away from the great theatres and famous dance schools, there were communities in which music, dance and local customs remained closely intertwined. Travelling with Juanjo Linares gave Deanna an opportunity to observe those traditions within the places and among the people to whom they belonged.
The value of those journeys was not simply the collection of more dances or steps.
They offered insight into what Deanna later described as Spain, the Spanish soul and the Spaniards as a people — an understanding that was not ordinarily available to a foreign dancer studying in Spain.
The early mornings, long journeys and remote destinations were therefore part of the education.
Sometimes, understanding the dance meant going to where the dance lived.
Dance Belongs to People
What Deanna encountered in regional Spain reinforced an idea that would remain important throughout her life in dance: traditions belong first to the communities that create and preserve them.
A dance can be taught in a studio. Its steps can be recorded, its music studied and its technique refined. But seeing a tradition within the place from which it emerged reveals something more.
The celebrations, clothing, music, landscape and character of a community all contribute to the way its dances develop and are understood.
Travelling with Juanjo Linares gave Deanna an opportunity rarely available to a visiting dancer. Rather than encountering Spanish folklore only through performances or formal study, she was able to observe traditions within the communities that had carried them from one generation to another.
Those journeys offered insights not only into Spanish dance, but into Spain itself — its regional identities, its people and the extraordinary variety of traditions found across the country.
For a dancer and teacher who would later devote decades to Spanish dance in Australia, that understanding was invaluable.
To preserve a dance, it is not enough simply to remember the steps. We must also understand where those steps came from.
From the Villages of Spain to a Lifetime of Teaching
The lessons Deanna carried away from those journeys did not remain in Spain.
They became part of a much larger understanding of Spanish dance — one that recognised technique as essential, but never separate from history, music, place and people.
In the decades that followed, Deanna would perform, choreograph and teach Spanish dance in Australia and internationally. Her work would encompass the different traditions of Spanish dance, from regional folklore and Escuela Bolera to Flamenco and Danza Estilizada.
The experiences she gained travelling through regional Spain gave her something that could not easily be learned from books or reproduced in a dance studio: an understanding of the cultural world from which those traditions had grown.
That distinction matters when dance is passed from one generation to another. Teaching the movement preserves one part of a tradition. Teaching something of its history, musical character and cultural origins helps preserve something deeper.
Decades after those early journeys, the villages, people and traditions Deanna encountered remain part of the remarkable story of a life devoted to Spanish dance.
Sometimes, to understand a dance, you have to understand the people and places that gave it life.