La Chana

“And surely the most extraordinary of those solos was ''The Passion That Creates,'' performed by La Chana, who gave the illusion that she was as much a sorceress as a dancer. She rushed onstage with desperate urgency. Slashing at the air with her arms, she could have been a woman possessed by spirits. When her feet moved quickly, they appeared to quake and tremble. But never was there any loss of control in this outburst. Rather, her heelwork produced dry rattling noises and led to an amazing sequence of trills in which the sounds of her feet against the floor built in a tremendous crescendo, only to dwindle away to exist on the edge of a silence that La Chana made as awesome as her storms.” The New York Times Antonia Santiago Amador (born December 24, 1946; better known as La Chana) is a Catalan gypsy dancer. Born in Barcelona in 1946, Amador Santiago is best known as a flamenco dancer with the stage name of La Chana, inherited from her uncle, the guitarist El Chano. She had two significant periods in her professional career, between 1966 and 1979 and again between 1985 and 1991.