Valerie Scannura

Valerie Scannura (Artistic Director, Choreographer, Dancer, Actor) has been a dancer since she was young. Born in Sudbury, Ontario, she followed her love of ballet to Toronto and graduated from the National Ballet School's prestigious Teacher Training Program in 1982. She was one of the youngest registrants to graduate from this intensive training course. She was enamored with flamenco and was thus inspired to begin studies in Spanish dance and flamenco in Toronto with Paula Moreno in the mid 1980's. Since that time, she has excelled in performing and teaching the art of flamenco and formed her professional school and company Ritmo Flamenco in 1995 alongside her husband, renowned flamenco guitarist Roger Scannura. Since then, she has performed in concerts and festivals worldwide in Canada, the U.S, Mexico, Europe and the Middle East. and has received accolades from National dance critic Paula Citron among others. Since the 1990's to the present she has traveled to Spain to further absorb ideas and training methods at various centers such as Madrid, Granada and Jerez de la Frontera. Her interest in film began when she danced flamenco in a Bravofact dance film called "Triple Booked" that was produced by Dana Glassman. She enjoyed choreographing and dancing on the TV show "How to Be Indie" in 2011 and went on to become more involved in film and television productions. To become acquainted with being on sets, she took part in several successful television series such as "Schitt's Creek" as a background actor and booked a commercial for OLG lottery as an Irish dancer. Proving that flamenco is bred in the bone, her daughter Anjelica is Co-Artistic Director of the company and is a successor of her work as she is an award-winning choreographer and and well established actor and comedian while her husband has composed music for several feature films and television series.