Beauty, Passion and Mystery: Fiesta Comes to Bellosguardo!

What a night! When the elegant grandeur of the Bellosguardo Estate is combined with the passion and power of ¡Flamenco! Santa Barbara, one of the most sensational companies of dancers and musicians on the West Coast, performing on an outdoor stage with the Pacific Ocean as a backdrop, the result is pure magic.

Dacia Harwood, executive director of the Santa Barbara Historical Museum and an integral part of the nonprofit Flamenco! Santa Barbara partnered with Jeremy Lindaman, president of the Bellosguardo Foundation, to create this event, with sponsorship from the Santa Ynez Chumash Foundation.

Bellosguardo means “Beautiful Lookout” in Italian, and the magnificent views of the Pacific are a testament to the truth in that name.

As guests arrived, we were greeted by the top-rated Mariachi band on the Central Coast: Mariachi Las Olas de Santa Barbara. The evening began with tours of the Bellosguardo Estate, former home of the enigmatic Anna Clark, widow of copper king Senator William Andrews Clark, and their daughter Huguette. After Huguette’s death, she bequeathed her estate to the Bellosguardo Foundation, with the intention that it should become a “new home for art, music, history, and culture on the California coast,” according to the Bellosguardo website.

Mystery infuses the incredibly opulent estate. As described on the website, “For [more than] 60 years Bellosguardo has been shrouded in mystery — one of the least-visited and most whispered-about landmarks on the California coast. An impenetrable secrecy has long hung over the estate until now.” Indeed, the ornately carved and meticulously maintained wood panels in the rooms where the public was allowed rival or exceed those of the most opulent palaces in Europe.

After touring the mansion, guests were led though the lavish gardens to the spectacular scenic lookout, where authentic Mexican snacks and margaritas were being served, and the concert was to take place.

Mariachi Las Olas treated us to a few more tunes before the parade of artists came on stage for the flamenco show.

First to enter were the musicians, led by the award-winning flamenco singer, dancer, choreographer, and maestro Manuel Gutierrez. Originally from Córdoba, Spain, Gutierrez won his first flamenco award when he was only 8 years old, and, by the age of 20, was touring Europe with many famous flamenco artists. He has performed and taught all over the U.S. and has mentored many of the Santa Barbaran flamenco dancers, including 2023 Spirit of Fiesta Jack ‘Joaquin’ Harwood and America’s number-one male flamenco dancer, Timo Nuñez. Gutierrez has been a featured performer at Las Noches de Ronda for many years, and has been an integral part of ¡Flamenco! Santa Barbara.

Gutierrez was followed by award-winning singer José Cortés, who comes from a long line of prominent Gitano musicians from Almería, Spain. Cortés won his first award at age 10, the coveted Premio del Joven Aficionado del Cante in Jerez de la Frontera. 

Award-winning guitarist Andres Vadin, originally from Habana, Cuba, completed the musical lineup for the show. Vadin is a graduate of the Guillermo Tomas and Amadeo Roldan Conservatory in Habana. He began studying music at age 10 and won first place in a prestigious classical guitar competition in Habana at age 12. Besides flamenco, Vadin is also skilled in classical, contemporary, and Middle Eastern music, and has performed all over Europe and the U.K., Ukraine, South America, and the Middle East. He is currently a guest artist at the Music Academy of the West, and has been performing with the Andres Vadin Project in the Santa Barbara Flamenco Arts Festival for many years.

I have admired these musicians at the Noches de Ronda performances for the last decade, and I had the absolute honor of writing about their performance this past spring at the Peña Flamenca la Maria.

The excitement was building as the dancers arrived!

First to dance were members of the company ¡Flamenco! Santa Barbara. I have seen these young performers grow in their artistry over the years, but as a company, they have taken a quantum leap this season. Their feet sound like one pair of feet, and their passion and duende are infectious. They are extremely talented and professional, and also genuinely nice people. Their sweetness comes across the footlights.

Gutierrez followed the company with solo singing and a solo dance performance. Wow! What a treat!

Then, entering the stage like a queen, came the award winning Maria “La Chacha” Bermudez. The audience cheered as she glided up the stairs to the stage. Bermudez performed solo with Cortés singing just for her. Flamenco is an intimate performance art that the audience is privileged to witness. It was clear that in those moments that the singer and dancer had eyes and hearts only for each other. As I learned when I wrote about the Peña, pure flamenco is completely improvisational, the dancer and musician(s) playing off each other.

And finally, entering the stage, exuding power and grace, came the tall, striking Timo Nuñez, considered the number-one flamenco dancer in the U.S. Nuñez has been featured on World of Dance, So You Think You Can Dance, at the Kennedy Center, and has been a choreographer and advisor for Dancing with the Stars. He began dancing at a young age with Santa Barbara’s Linda Vega, and was also mentored by Manuel Gutierrez. Nuñez left Santa Barbara to study in Spain for many years, notably with the legendary Farruquito, who has been called the greatest flamenco dancer of this century by the New York Times.

One can certainly see a lot of Farruquito’s style in Nuñez’s dancing. He performed an exquisite set, masterfully changing rhythms and controlling the music, and subtly flirting with the audience. A quote about Farruquito from his Instagram page applies equally well to his student, Nuñez: “Para que vamos a insistir buscando palabras bonitas que lo perfilen y le babeen en el oido. Porque esbozar siquiera una definicion seria injusto, es limitarlo,” which, according to Google Translate, means, “Why should we insist on finding pretty words to describe him and impress him? Because even outlining a definition would be unfair; it would limit him.”

Nuñez directs Timo Nuñez Arte Flamenco and partners with Bermudez to lead and train the dancers of ¡Flamenco! Santa Barbara.

Lastly, the company returned for a group improv. Musicians called dancers out individually to improvise as the audience cheered. The highlight of this final set was a duet between Bermudez and Jack Harwood, 2023 Spirit of Fiesta. See my clips of the performances here.

When Harwood won Spirit of Fiesta in 2023, his message was to inspire and encourage other boys to dance, “breaking down walls and stigmas and stereotypes around male dancers, especially in the U.S.”  His dance credits since his year as Spirit include being a finalist in the prestigious Flamenco Certamen, U.S.A. in New York, the nation’s only competition for up-and-coming flamenco artists in 2024, and being principal dancer this past winter in the L.A. Opera’s production of Aindamar, the tragic story of Spain’s Federico García Lorca.

I cannot emphasize enough how absolutely fortunate we are in Santa Barbara to have such amazing artists in our midst, who are, above all, some of the very sweetest and most humble people you will ever meet. It was a stunning opening to Fiesta week in Santa Barbara. I hope readers got to see more of them at the various Fiesta events, especially Las Noches de Ronda at the historic Courthouse. And you can see members of the company perform Saturday, August 9, in Yulia Maluta’s annual Colors of Love concert at Center Stage Theater (click here for information).

Flamenco! Santa Barbara (flamencosb.org) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing our community with educational experiences, authentic performances, artist-in-residence programs, and student scholarships. From their website readers can find out about performances, ongoing classes, master classes by visiting maestros, peñas, and donate to their worthy cause of providing scholarships for students.