Kristina Larsson

Kristina Larsson always wanted to dance, but she was turned off by the phony smiles she saw fixed on the faces of most performers. “When I saw flamenco, I thought, ‘Wow! They’re not smiling!’” she says. It was that subtle epiphany that helped this Minnesotan fall in love with a dance associated with the sultry climes of Southern Spain. It happened on her thirty-eighth birthday: She had been wandering around Paris for six months, a painter/waitress on her first visit overseas, and three weeks before her return home, she decided to take a flamenco class. “That was the end of life as I formerly knew it.” Now Larsson’s own company and dance school, Anda Flamenco, is part of a surprisingly robust local flamenco scene. “It’s the climate,” says Larsson. “We’re attracted to opposites.” Kristina de Sacramento, as she’s known onstage at nightspots like Babalu and Nochee, travels to Spain every year to study dance. What if she should become stranded on a desert island en route? Here’s what she’d want to have on hand:

1. I’d bring my cat. Cats fascinate me. Time stops, and I feel like a kid when I watch them. They are the most amazing physical creatures. When I’m teaching flamenco to non-dancers, I teach them to walk like a panther. That creeping weightlessness, that impending doom to the prey–that’s very much an idee of flamenco. You stalk the audience a lot.

2. My dancing shoes and a board to dance on. I’d need a board because the shoes wouldn’t make sound on the sand, and that sound is essential to the dance. Flamenco shoes are like an instrument. The only good ones are made in Spain. They have steel arches. The heels and the points of the shoe have tiny nails in them, to give support and make sound. They are like castanets. Every maker’s shoes sound different. I have maybe twenty pairs.

3. I’d need a singer to accompany my dancing. In the Twin Cities we have a great cantaora (a native flamenco singer), Mar”a Elena Òla Cordobesa,Ó which is why I’m still here. It’s a great honor to be able to work with her.

4. A homing pigeon, so I can stay in communication with friends and family. That undulation of love and ideas is very sustaining for me. I can write the messages with ink and paper I make from things on the island.

5. Some beautiful human-made thing to inspire me to remember hopes and dreams and the ability of the spirit to soar above the mundane. Maybe a stained-glass window from some cathedral. Didn’t Matisse make paper cutouts at the end of his life that were made into windows? He, for me, represented both the joy and delightful transcendence of life.

For more on the Anda Flamenco Company and School, go to www.andaflamenco.com.