After more than 23 years performing and producing flamenco events in the Maria Benitez Cabaret Theater at The Lodge in Santa Fe, studied flamenco performer Emily Grimm (aka La Emi) will move to the Inn and Spa at Loretto this year. And with the 2024 season of shows just around the -corner, she tells SFR she’s feeling focused and excited. Grimm is, of course, well-known to the Santa Fe flamenco faithful, and with years of training under her belt in Santa Fe, Spain and beyond, it’s easy to assume she’s the real deal. And that’s before we even get into Grimm’s EmiArte Academy, a flamenco dance school that, since 2017, has been dedicated to training up the next generation of youth performers—including at schools throughout New Mexico—alongside adults interested in the enduring art. With the Dance of the Heart, Music of the Soul series beginning its first of four runs this week (8 pm Monday-Saturday; 2 pm Sunday matinees, Wed. Aug. 21-Sunday, Sept. 1, $25-$65, the Inn & Spa at Loretto, 211 Old Santa Fe Trail, emiarteflamenco.com), we spoke with Grimm to learn more. This interview has been edited for clarity and concision. (Alex De Vore)
After so many years at The Lodge, why switch venues now?
It was sold by the owners from Heritage Hotels & Resorts and the owners of El Rey Court bought it and were receptive to keeping it going, but I had a really positive experience working with Heritage, and Loretto is downtown. It was definitely bittersweet, because The Lodge is the first place I ever saw flamenco, but it’s also exciting. That first time…was María Benitez, because my dad David Grimm was the box office manager for Maria, and my mom would go to shows when she was pregnant with me. I vaguely have this memory from when I was two of trying to get up and dance. At four years old, I enrolled in María’s classes. At 10, I started performing at The Lodge for Sunday matinees and dancing with María’s youth company. Before that, even, I would usher Maria’s shows. Fast forward nine or 10 years, I worked with EntreFlamenco, Juan Siddi and under the National Institute of Flamenco, all at The Lodge; and then I produced my own shows there. I remember the last show there, and it was emotional—a packed house, a standing ovation. And I -remember thinking ‘this is the end of a chapter.’ I felt it, but I feel like when one chapter ends, another begins.
As an artist, does a change in venue shake you up or inspire you to think about new ways to create?
This is a new beginning. Although the vision was always to do something with my dance company and Vicente Griego, my godfather, with his band, Revozo, and we’re finally getting to do it. This show is not only a dance show, but there’s a full band. We have the most incredible musicians—a violin player, an incredible percussionist, an amazing guitarist, an incredible male dancer and two female dancers. Honestly, we have a huge team. And we’ve done shows like this before, but I’ve never produced a run with both our companies. It just feels so right—this is what we want to be doing, and it’s the first opportunity to do it this way. Vicente will be singing and we’ll have a huge variety of numbers. We’re going to debut a duet and a bolero. I’m also doing a number with the violin player that is very different from what we’ve done: a brand new solo, a soleá. That means ‘solitude,’ and it’s one of the most profound dances. It’s all about expressing loss and tragedy and inner-strength. I started learning this one two-and-a-half years ago, but it’s such a profound number that I didn’t feel like I could start understanding it until now. The reality is that life has every emotion, pain, humor, love, strength—it’s so rich, and they say for the soleá, you need more life experience to dance the number. I needed more life experience.
Let’s talk about the EmiArte dance school for a sec. How’s that going?
I turned it into a nonprofit in 2019, and I’ve spent a lot of time this year seeing what I want to do and where I wanted to go with it. At this point, we’re working with the public and charter schools of New Mexico six-and-a-half months a year, and the programs are 100% free and funded through grants and donors. We work in Hobbs, Chama, Taos, Española and in the Peñasco Independent School district, where I’m from. We also have an incredible partnership with the Lensic Performing Arts Center, so we do six weeks in Santa Fe and bring the students to perform at the Lensic twice. Then we have our home studio in Santa Fe where we provide scholarships for classes and no one is turned away. I teach the dance, Vicente [Griego] teaches voice, and a guitar player teaches guitar, and then [the students] get the chance to perform. We’ve created a -tremendous sense of community.