Handed Down - Nevada Arts Council

1991–1992
Basque Dance:
Jesus Larrea and Lisa Corcostegui
Basque culture is imbedded deep in the history of
the American West, and maintains strong living
connections to its European homeland that have kept
it alive and vital here. A very personal connection was
made when the apprenticeship program allowed Basque
dance master Jesus Larrea to spend a month in Reno
with Lisa Corcostegui, director of the University of
Nevada’s Zenbat Gara Basque Dancers.
Jesus started dancing as a teenager with a group from
his school in San Sebastian, and by age 18 he was good
enough to join one of the area’s semi-professional dance
troupes, Argia. Argia’s director has done extensive field
research on traditional village dances and celebrations,
and has even helped revive dances that were almost lost
after the Spanish Civil War. Jesus is now an instructor
with Argia, and has performed with the group all
over the Basque Country, as well as in Italy, Hungary,
Czechoslovakia, France, Cuba and the United States. He
and List first met when they were both performing at an
international Basque festival in the summer of 1990.
was little. My grandma used to tell us stories, too, about
where she lived when she was young and the things she
used to do over there, and it just seemed, you know,
magical almost.” Lisa’s dream came true when she was
able to visit the country for a summer, and then return
for 2 ½ years as part of UNR’s Basque Studies Program.
Lisa, her Basque husband Enrique, and a few friends
put together a dance for a University ethnic celebration
in 1989, and from that was born the Zenbat Gara
Dancers. The company now numbers 20, and has performed
all over the West. Working intensively with Jesus
allowed Lisa to learn many more dances, both solo
and group, from every region of the Basque country.
The benefits of personal instruction were invaluable;
she says, “Some things you can learn off a video, more
or less, and other things, just forget it. And this is one
of those things you have to have somebody who knows
what they’re doing to teach you how to do it.” Jesus
also worked with Zenbat Gara while he was in Reno,
as well as with the children’s dance group of the Reno
Basque Club; his wife even came with him and helped
the group make some authentic new costumes to go
with the new dances. It is exchanges like these that keep
Nevada’s Basque community very much alive and connected
to its roots.
Jesus teaching Lisa and other members
of the Zenbat Gara Dancers.
Lisa was raised in Ontario, Oregon, near the Idaho
border and her parents’ home town of Nampa. Her
Basque mother and grandmother instilled an early love
of Basque culture, and Lisa started dancing when she
was just four or five years old. “I always wanted to go to
the Basque country, and I always wanted to do anything
Basque,” she says. “Every time I had to do a report, you
know, and you could write on whatever you wanted, always
Basque this, Basque that, Basque whatever. I was
just in love with the culture, I always was, ever since I
Lisa Corcostegui and Jesus Larrea.
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