Lia Grainger performs La Forastera at Vancouver International Flamenco Festival, September 19

Toronto dancer’s full-length multidisciplinary work is about a woman’s struggle to find her place within a foreign artform

By Gail Johnson

Lia Grainger.

The Vancouver International Flamenco Festival presents La Forastera (The Outsider) on September 19 at 8 pm at the Waterfront Theatre

WITH HER LONG and lean physique, Lia Grainger has developed a flamenco style that is all her own. She’ll bring her unique form to this year’s Vancouver International Flamenco Festival in a work called La Forastera (The Outsider).

The full-length multidisciplinary production by the founder of Toronto’s Flamencolía Dance Company features not only dance and live music but also projections, soundscapes, narration, and documentary footage shot in Spain.

La Forastera is a love story about the passion between a woman and an art form that is not hers and about the struggle to find her place within that foreign craft. It is about learning a skill as opposed to being born into it, about things that cannot be taught but can only be gained through lived experience, and about the fact that every story has meaning and value. La Forastera was nominated for a 2023 Dora Mavor Moore Award in the category of outstanding performance by an individual—dance.

Born in Vancouver, Grainger began her dance training in 2002, studying with mavens Oscar Nieto and Kasandra “La China”. From 2015 to 2019, she lived in Spain full-time, returning to Canada to perform, studying with greats like Manuela Rios, Farruquito, Manuel Betanzos, Úrsula López, and Alicia Márquez. She returned to Canada permanently in 2019 and now calls Toronto home.  

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