Drawn to the exacting discipline of the Spanish dance in its manifold forms, DEANNA BLACHER, founder of Danza Viva Spanish Dance Company and Academy and the Spanish Dance Institute, Inc., has devoted a lifetime to the study, teaching, performing and choreography of the Spanish dance.

As pedagogue, she has worked tirelessly to advance the interests of the Spanish dance (some of her lectures on the subject have been published at university level).

She was guest teacher in Spanish dance for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Canada, and performed innumerable solo dance recitals in South Africa, Australia, Europe and North America.

DEANNA BLACHER's teachers include, inter alia, Elsa Brunelleschi, Victoria Eugenia and nearly all of the great teachers of the 20th century. Amongst them are the incomparable La Quica, her daughter and son in law, Mercedes y Albano, El Guito, Ciro, Paco Fernandez, Jose Antonio, Jose Granero, Alberto Lorca, Maria Magdalena, Flora Albaicin, Victoria Eugenia, Regla Ortega, Isabel Quintero, Luisa Pericet, Matilda Corral, Manolo Marin and Merche Esmeralda.

In addition, Deanna studied Jota with famed jotero Pedro Azorin and undertook extensive study with Juanjo Linares in the regional dance of Spain. She had the rare distinction of being invited to travel with him to outlying villages to research the folklore and folk dance traditions of communities well away from the tourist circuit. She vividly recalls rising at 4am in the depths of winter in order to catch a 5am bus or train to anywhere from Cuenca to Burgos to Huelva or Segovia. These trips were immensely useful in providing insights to Spain, the Spanish soul and the Spaniards as a people, quite apart from their glorious dance tradition, that are not ordinarily available to foreign dancers in Spain.

Recently DEANNA BLACHER danced the title role in Lorca's Yerma in Goyo Montero's choreography of the Lorca drama. She has done more than anyone before her to place the Spanish dance firmly on the arts map of Western Australia, from which base she frequently travels interstate and abroad in a number of dance capacities. Her system of graded Spanish dance examinations is being increasingly adopted both in Australia and abroad.