“My love for the conservatory is what took me everywhere,” remembers Luis Santamaría. Since he was 4 years old dancing, the young Valencian remembers that he never stood still and from there to making dancing his profession, and his life, years of sacrifice and a lot of determination have passed. The person who currently holds the regional recognition as best dancer of the year has spent his entire life dancing.
Santamaría won the Autonomous Dance Prize in 2023, after a kind of competition among his own conservatory classmates - he studied at the Valencia one - and then overcoming the competition between students from different Valencian conservatories. "They sent me an email and told me I had won. I got a 9.3... and nothing more," the artist answers when we ask. He assumes that dance has less recognition of the effort it demands. "Supporting Spanish culture more would be very good and it is something that is not done much in this country," he claims with a certainly optimistic tone.
Her journey began in the rooms of the Mari Cruz Alcalá dance school, in Valencia, and from there she went to the conservatory, "where many people came to learn all the dance styles and I wanted to do it to see what I really liked," account. She then discovered her passion for Spanish dance, in which she ended up specializing last year.
A career that he has been pursuing outside of his studies, since he completed his Baccalaureate in Health with Honors last year. A 10 on average is not easily achieved, so Luis Santamaría recognizes that he gave up going out with his friends and many other things: during the week he studied and went to the conservatory and on the weekend, he studied more. "It was worth it to me and mentally it was not difficult for me," he explains, still recognizing that "you sacrifice your entire social life."
And after all the effort, nothingness comes... starting from scratch. Because that is what he does in Madrid, where he has moved to look for an opportunity. Of course, he continues to take advantage of that talent for study and studies Biochemistry at the Complutense University.
"I told my parents that I wanted to go to Madrid, which is where the important dance companies are, but they told me that if I wanted to go I had to study a career because dance is a very unstable world and, with all sense of world, I listened to them. I am a very responsible person, I know what I want and I know that you have to sacrifice," he adds.
Admire Jesús Carmona, a National Dance Prize winner in 2020 and Benois de la Danse Prize 2021, and who has just been offered to direct the new Spanish Ballet of Madrid. He would prefer to follow in the footsteps of the Barcelonan, which is why he is far from home: "If you want to stay in Valencia you stay in a tablao, or in a show, but you are not going to go on tour, because the choreographers, the companies, etc., are in the capital."
The way he tells it, it is almost an abyss that he sees between Valencia and cities like Madrid, and even Barcelona, although he believes that without contacts in the profession it is difficult for 'the flute to sound'. "In the end the world of dance requires a lot of luck, it means going to a class and having a teacher see you and pick you up, call you, take you to the audition, you need luck and contacts within dance and... No, I don't have them," he says. Tesón, of course, is not lacking.
