As an Irish and Puerto Rican girl who grew up in Seattle, Savannah Fuentes did not have much exposure to her Latin heritage. That changed when she first saw flamenco dancers on TV.

“My parents were hippies, so it wasn’t like I had a real cultural reference,” she said. “My Puerto Rican family wasn’t here. I knew we had a Spanish name, but I didn’t really have a concept of my identity. I remember sitting on the couch and seeing a Travel Channel show about dancing, and in that moment I just knew that was me. It was this incredible feeling of, ‘Oh, that is who I am.’”

Fuentes said it was the raw power of the art form that caught her eye.

“I think it is the percussive nature of the footwork,” she said. “I didn’t even know what I was watching. I must have been 7 or 8 years old, and it was kind of an epiphany for me.”

Although she wouldn’t learn how to dance in the flamenco style for another decade, the seed was planted.

“I started dancing at around 18 years old,” Fuentes said. “I was really lucky, and I have been lucky through this whole crazy journey to have the right people pop into my life at the right time.

“A woman named Ana Montes had just moved here (to Seattle),” she added. “There are a lot of people who teach flamenco who don’t have proper technique, proper skills, proper background. This woman was a very complete, well-rounded dancer who had danced in Spain and was a very sound dancer. I was lucky to start with someone who was good, a quality artist.”

Fuentes later studied under Sara de Luis, whom she credits with helping her become the dancer she is today.

Fuentes continues to study both flamenco dancing and singing, and she has toured throughout the western United States, independently producing more than 300 performances and workshops featuring internationally recognized Spanish flamenco artists such as Jose Anillo, Saray Munoz, Jesus Montoya and Juanarito.

Port Townsend performance

Fuentes will bring her latest show, “Luz, An Evening of Flamenco,” to Port Townsend on March 5. It will begin at 7:30 p.m. at the The Chameleon Theater, 800 W. Park Ave. Tickets are available at Brown Paper Tickets.

Onstage, Fuentes will be joined by Spanish-Romani guitarist Pedro Cortes and singer, percussionist and dancer Jose Moreno. The all-ages performance will be the fifth stop on a 27-date tour of Washington, California, Oregon and Nevada.

Speaking flamenco

The dancer and the musicians communicate through music while they are on stage, Cortes said.

“Flamenco is a language, and we are communicating while we are performing,” he said. “The majority of the stuff you see is probably 90 percent improv. Usually we have a beginning, and we have an ending, and maybe we have a middle section that we set, but everything in between is totally improv depending on how you feel that day.”

The dancer and musicians have to trust one another implicitly, Cortes said.

“We both know the language we are speaking in,” he said. “We are professionals. We can improvise. I have played shows without having met somebody before. We go on stage. We just say, ‘What footwork are we doing, how many letras (phrases) do you want? How many footwork sections are you going to do?’ Then you go.

“It is very exciting,” he added. “It feels new every time we form, because we are always trying to do new material, new numbers in which we are elaborating on.”

When Fuentes is on stage, she said she becomes one with the music.

“I go into a zone of concentration,” she said. “Flamenco singing is very important to me, so when I hear that singing, I am definitely trying to channel the emotion of the phrase. Our singing comes in phrases of poetry called letras. I really try to embody the letras and feel them.

“Flamenco singing is a lot like Arabic singing where one note is carried over several measures,” she added. “The tonality and the changes in the singing.”

Fuentes said she enjoys performing with Cortes.

“I am lucky because Pedro is an amazing guitarist,” she said. “It is not the same as solo guitaring or Spanish rumba or music, it is a real art form, and he is great. With the guitar, sometimes he is playing straight rhythm for me to do footwork, and sometimes he is playing more of a musical falsetta, so I am trying to align with him and do the rhythm of my feet to what he is doing.”