A Lifelong Pursuit

As a child, Eliza Llewellyn '95 was a talented dancer who felt out of place in a ballet world mired in tradition. She struck out from her native New Orleans to Brooks, where she discovered flamenco. Now, she is a renowned flamenco dancer who has reached the heights of the profession, and who tours and educates to spread and maintain the cultural art form.

In order to find her home, Eliza Llewellyn '95 needed to leave her home. Since she was young, a passion for dance ignited her, and it seems almost fated that she would become a prominent, internationally touring flamenco dancer. But, her path to the heights of her profession led out of her native New Orleans, through North Andover, and on to Santa Fe, Mexico, San Francisco and Spain.

"I really can't remember a time when I didn't love dance," says Llewellyn, "and the periods of time that I have studied it have become the absolute center of my life." Her parents — a mother who worked as a dealer of contemporary Latin-American art and a father who worked as a neurosurgeon — both loved art, dance and flamenco, but limited opportunities for flamenco existed in New Orleans when Llewellyn was young. When she was 3 years old, Llewellyn's parents enrolled her in a ballet class instead, and Llewellyn "fell in love with ballet from day one."

Llewellyn says she studied ballet intensively until she was 12 years old. "Ballet was all I wanted to do and all I could think of," she says. "It was my dream."Her dreams of dancing as a professional ballerina were dashed, though, when her instructors told her that her body type was not a body type traditionally associated with a ballerina. "To be told that I had the talent but not the body type," she says."I was discouraged. I was also bi-cultural and there weren't a lot of Latinos in my particular world. So, you know, it just ... it broke my heart. I stepped away from dance very reluctantly, feeling like there wasn't a future for me."

The sense of isolation Llewellyn felt extended to her private school in New Orleans, which she says had small numbers of Latino students enrolled. Then, her world expanded: A friend of Llewellyn's left New Orleans to attend The Groton School, and would routinely regale Llewellyn with stories of "field hockey, squash and lacrosse, and all these sports I'd never heard of," she laughs. "It sounded very exotic, and I felt like I wanted to discover more than where I was in New Orleans." Llewellyn traveled north to visit Brooks, and was immediately won over by what she remembers as a beautiful campus and a kind tour guide. She enrolled, she says, because "I felt like this was the right place for me. In hindsight, it really was."

Llewellyn's time in North Andover reconnected her with her family's love of flamenco in a surprising context. "I took AP Spanish at Brooks," Llewellyn says. "Ms. Muto-Graves had us do presentations in Spanish and a girl in my class, Chica Mori '93, did a flamenco demonstration. She had studied. I remember clearly her dancing that day in the class, and I will never forget the sensation I had: a tickling sensation in my hands and feet, goosebumps. I was profoundly moved, and I called my mom that night and told her I wanted to study flamenco. I was 14 years old."

The following summer, Llewellyn began taking classes at the New Mexico Institute for Spanish Arts in Santa Fe, directed by Maria Benitez, a pioneer of flamenco in North America. Llewellyn flourished as the youngest student at the school (she recalls dancing so much that she lost her toenails, and then kept on dancing), and instructors recognized her burgeoning talent."It was such a great feeling" she says. "I felt like I'd finally found the art form that was for me. And,I fit in. In fact, they kept saying that I really had the look. I felt like I had finally found my home, and I remember working really hard."

Llewellyn continued her studies at Brooks and then Dickinson College, interspersed with summer and other trips to Santa Fe. After college, Llewellyn moved to Mexico, and immediately took up flamenco classes while working as a freelance writer and journalist. Within two years, she says, she had improved enough to audition in Spain for flamenco legend Mario Maya, and she was one of 42 students — and, she says, one of only a few students from outside Spain — to be selected to enter Maya's prestigious Centro de Estudios Escenicos Mario Maya in Granada, Spain. She lived and studied in Granada and Seville, Spain, for two years before returning to America to take up a position with the Theater Flamenco of San Francisco and then Juan Siddi Flamenco Santa Fe, an opportunity she calls "a dream come true."

Over the past decade, Llewellyn has worked with the most prominent flamenco companies in the United States. She's been touring on a heavy schedule, but she also makes time for educational outreach and demonstrations, and has begun working with Flamenco Rouge, a Louisiana-based organization that nurtures interest in the art. "When I finally saw somebody my age perform as a teenager at Brooks, it brought it home for me and made flamenco feel like something I could do," she says. "So, I'm very passionate about offering these first opportunities to kids, but also to adults and the elderly."

Llewellyn says that flamenco is not just an art form. "It's an expression of culture and a way of life," she explains. "Being from New Orleans, I liken it a lot to blues or jazz or the whole experience of the second line and Mardi Gras. We just do things differently, and we channel those experiences into an expression of music."

Llewellyn, who tours under the artistic name Eliza Gonzalez (her mother's maiden name, which she points out is easier to pronounce in Spanish than "Llewellyn"), plans to continue dancing far into the future. "Even when I can't walk, I'll dance with my hands," she promises. "I have to do it. I love it. It's a part of me."