With a megawatt smile and more poise than many ladies twice her age, Goleta girl Marissa Cordero is ready to stamp and clap her way through Fiesta as this year’s Junior Spirit.
“Happy,” is the word Marissa uses to describe how she feels when she dances. “I just like doing it.”

Marissa is the third generation of dancers in her family to dance at Fiesta: her great-grandmother, Lupe Barba, whom she credits as an inspiration, danced in the first Fiesta celebration more than 75 years ago, and her mother, Tracie Cordero, was also a Fiesta dancer.

Marissa grew up around flamenco, having first started at age 4 with the venerable Linda Vega Dance Studio. The constant presence of flamenco music and dance around the house, as well as friends and cousins who are also dancers no doubt contributed to her love of the art form. Six years later, at the age of 10, her mother said, Marissa was practically a shoo-in for the highly competitive spot.

“It was her first time dancing solo,” Tracie said. Apparently Marissa’s well-honed posture and bearing, as well as her grace during the interview, was enough to win the judges’ approval on her first try to become Junior Spirit. The pool of candidates is a tight one: only girls ages 9-11 are allowed to try out and in this flamenco community, the girls often have years and years of training by the time they audition for the title.

When she’s not practicing or performing, Marissa devotes time to her other passion: soccer. In fact, it was almost a toss-up between soccer and flamenco for the active St. Rafael’s fourth-grader, who made the all-star team in her league last year. But who says a girl can’t be both a soccer star and a flamenco star at the same time? In fact, it’s her zen-like can-do attitude that gives the 10-year-old her ability to get up in front of hundreds of people despite the occasional flurry of butterflies.

“I don’t conquer (the stage fright). I just deal with it.”