Spanish nights: La Emi returns with a new flamenco dance and music show

“La Emi” returns to Heritage Hotels & Resorts with a new flamenco show on three stages in northern and southern New Mexico.

Emmy Grimm, who goes by “La Emi,” is a renowned flamenco performer and instructor. She was a resident performer at The Lodge at Santa Fe and produced a show there for six years until Heritage sold the property last fall. Grimm is now starting a new chapter with her professional company, EmiArteFlamenco, at another Heritage property, the Inn and Spa at Loretto, 211 Old Santa Fe Trail, in Santa Fe.

Spanish nights: La Emi returns with a new flamenco dance and music show

“I have been performing at The Lodge on and off for 23 years,” Grimm said. “I started dancing there when I was 10 years old with María Benítez’s youth company, Flamenco Next Generation. From there, I worked with all the companies that were working there. I worked with Juan Siddi, I worked with the National Institute of Flamenco, I worked with Entreflamenco. So it was full circle to be able to produce there, with my company, and we produced for six years. It was a really beautiful chapter of my life.”

Grimm said she enjoyed working with Heritage and wanted to stay with the hospitality group. She will be performing at the Inn and Spa at Loretto at 8 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday through Sept. 1. Performances will resume later in the fall from Sept. 27 through Sept. 29, and Oct. 4 through Oct. 6. The winter schedule will change to 7:30 p.m. Dec. 26 through Dec. 31.

Grimm and her flamenco company will head north to Taos for performances at El Monte Sagrado on Oct. 18 and Oct. 19. EmiArteFlamenco will then head south to Las Cruces for performances on Oct. 24 and Oct. 25 at Hotel Encanto de Las Cruces.

“I’m thrilled to be collaborating with Vicente Griego and his band, Revózo,” Grimm said. “Now it’s a full band in the show. We’re going to have a violin player, we’re going to have a percussionist, we have two guitarists that are going to be alternating, we also have a male dancer and then we have two other female dancers. It’s not only a dance show, it’s a music show.”

Grimm will have a new solo performance in the show that she has been working on for about 2½ years.

“It’s a very deep flamenco style called soleá and it actually means solitude,” she explained. “It’s something that you really can’t begin to understand until you have more life experience. I think that I’m just at the beginning of this journey into this new dance. I’m really excited to debut it.”

Grimm will also be performing a bolero duet to a love song.

“It’s about love and the challenges of love, and will it work? Will it not?” she explained.

The show ebbs and flows with expressions of many emotions.

“We’re opening with a tango, and that’s an extremely happy piece, joyful, playful,” Grimm said. “We have the entire company, four dancers, our violinists, our percussionist, our guitarist, Vicente, and so it’s going to be (an) energy packed number.”

There will be a dance featuring bastones, which are canes, and another dance featuring the well-known bata de cola, which is the train dress with castanets.

“We’re going to have an opening with a number where I’m dancing and there’s violin,” Grimm said. “We’re really bringing in the world of a band and the world of a dance company. So they’re getting two shows in one.”

When Grimm is not performing, she is instructing as part of her nonprofit, EmiArteFlamenco Academy. Its mission is to empower children through the art form of flamenco. Her academy has a residency program that teaches flamenco singing, guitar and dance instruction at several New Mexico public schools in Chama, Española, Hobbs, Peñasco, Santa Fe, Taos and Tierra Amarilla, as well as Monte de Sol Charter School in Santa Fe.

Grimm continues to sharpen her flamenco skills. At age 21, she began traveling to Spain to study flamenco. At the start, she would go for three to six months to study. She now goes to Spain for a month and a half to train each year.

“My teacher, Gala Vivancos, she’s amazing,” Grimm said. “I’ve been training with her for about four years and I feel like the journey will never end. And that’s the beauty of flamenco, is you never arrive. You have to fall in love with the journey, because it’s a never-ending journey. There’s so much to learn, and that’s really, I think, the beauty of it.”