Jaine Blackman meets a woman who wants to share her passion for Spanish dance and culture and will be getting Cornbury ready to rumble

When Rosa Maria Reed moved to Oxfordshire she felt a bit like a fish out of water.

“For the first time I was in a part of the UK where people were not familiar with the Spanish language, culture or flamenco,” says Rosa Maria.

So she set about showing people what they were missing.

Fast forward 12 years and not only has she founded the biggest flamenco dancing school outside Spain and brought Latin flavour to the county with Spanish events but she is gearing up to teach thousands of people how to rumba at Cornbury Festival.

With the help of her team of teachers, flamenco expert Rosa Maria, director of the award-winning dance school Camino del Flamenco, will give lessons throughout Sunday afternoon on July 6 in readiness for The Gipsy Kings’ exclusive UK appearance.

“We will be showing everyone a few simple rumba steps so they can really dance to the Gipsy Kings,” says Rosa Maria.

“It will be a flamenco flashmob when they start to play.

“Flamenco rumba is really simple to learn, whatever age you are; it’s the party dance of Spain, danced at every occasion.

“The Gipsy Kings have been part of Spanish life for many years. At any gathering, if someone puts on Bamboleo everyone gets to their feet and dances. Every time I hear their music it brings back a stream of memories for me and all Spaniards.

“Flamenco is much more than just a few catchy tunes, it is our life in music.”

Rosa Maria was born in the UK to Spanish parents and brought up in Little Spain.

“It’s the area in West London (Ladbroke Grove, Portobello Road, Golborne Road) where many Spanish families settled after the war,” explains Rosa Maria.

“Within that area was a Spanish School, Spanish church, several Spanish shops and a few bars/restaurants. There were also several peñas (Spanish social clubs) which supported the migrants.

“It doesn’t really exist now, as in the last 20 years the older people have died off and the younger people (like me) couldn’t afford to carry on living there and moved further out.

“As a child I thought it was a normal upbringing, but it was as if I was living in Spain.”

Rosa Maria began to dance at the age of six, beginning flamenco when she was 15 and dancing professionally when she 19.

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During her career she has danced on stage, film and television and private parties (“the King of Spain was at one of them”).

She’s also appeared in music videos for stars including Robert Palmer, Fergal Sharkey and Shane McGowan of the Pogues.

So she found it quite different when she moved to Oxfordshire when plumber husband Ian was offered a job here.

“Our children [Nico and Madeleine, a professional flamenco dancer] had left home by then and my parents had passed on, so there was nothing to keep us back in London and we thought it would be fun to try something different,” says Rosa Maria, of Steeple Aston.

After a disastrous visit to a salsa class in Oxford (“Men I wouldn’t want to be trapped in a lift with wanted to touch me with their clammy hands. There’s no physical contact in flamenco”) Rosa Maria decided to take matters into her own hands.

“I’ve danced and taught flamenco dancing for all my life, so the answer was obvious, I started my own small dancing school.

“Over the years it just grew and grew; we now run classes, workshops and shows for adults and children in Oxfordshire, Northamptonshire, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire, making us the biggest flamenco dancing school outside Spain.

“I found it very difficult to make a life as in rural Oxfordshire there are not many people living there whose parents come from somewhere else and who have a different mentality and you find yourself feeling a bit different.

“But really now, looking back, I realise that it was no different than if we had moved to a rural village in Spain.

“We were incomers and that was all. Once people get to know you they soon become friendly and the way that I accomplished that was by developing the classes.

“Spanish people and people of Spanish descent came to the classes from all over the area and we soon developed a social side to the classes too. We also attracted a lot of local people who enjoyed and were interested in Spanish music, culture and dance.”

There are currently more than 60 adult students on the books in Oxfordshire and around 75 children, with ages ranging from three to 68.

She also runs summer courses and workshops for adults and children in Oxford, Banbury and Didcot and has bi-monthly Spanish evenings at The Mill Arts Centre, Banbury with musicians and dancers, snacks and sangria.

Now, at Cornbury, she’s hoping to add more flamenco fans.“And I’m hoping very much that after the workshops I’ll be able to see the Gipsy Kings perform – that would be the icing on the cake of my day.

“These are the band who have taken Spanish music into the mainstream and are responsible for lots of people getting into Spanish music and finding out how great it is. They are legends.”

Camino Del Flamenco presents its end of year student show, with professional Spanish musicians and guest professional dancers at Cornerstone Arts, Didcot, on Saturday June 28.

For more information see facebook.com/camino.delflamenco