About Me

I am Coco Cabrel, though many of my dance maestros and students from earlier in my career know me by my given name, Corinne. I have studied and worked with some of our greatest flamenco and Spanish dance maestros -- Ciro, Antonio Vargas, Manolo Rivera, Luis Montero, and Vida Peral, to name a fistful, as well as perhaps the master of the masters, Jose Granero. I performed with the Chicago-based company, Teresa y Los Preferidos, where I had my humble start in a Sevillanas class, and I eventually went on to form my own company, Encuentro. Encuentro has performed, taught, and sponsored workshops in Chicago, Milwaukee, South Bend, Taos, and Santa Fe, and has just landed in Los Angeles -- bring it! I taught at the University of New Mexico - Taos and  set choreography for Federico Garcia Lorca's "Blood Wedding" at Wisconsin Lutheran College in Milwaukee.

My husband and I met as dancers in Teresa y Los Preferidos Spanish Dance Company. We actually didn't say a word to each other for at least the first year that I was in the company (he had already been there for a few years), but when the director of the company first put us together as partners, the chemistry was undeniable -- to us and to everyone around us. It is a fiery relationship, but dance seems to heal any third degree burns. Besides our older children from our previous marriages, we have two little boys who love flamenco and all dance and music.

May we all sing and play and dance as freely as children, with the wisdom of our elders and the passion of our deepest selves.