Sometime after flamenco producer Sharon Sapienza died unexpectedly 10 years ago, her mother dreamt that she appeared to her and told her to “get on with it!”

At the time, Edwige Sapienza was toying with the idea of writing a book following her only daughter’s abrupt death as she was steadily recovering from heart surgery at 38.

A decade on, that book is being published in honour of a talented flamenco dancer, choreographer, artistic director and founder of a production company that toured the world, representing many of Spain’s top talent.

Known as the girl ‘adopted’ by flamenco, Sharon left Malta for Seville aged 17, successfully carving out a name for herself in the tight-knit world of the authentic dance form and managing to infiltrate the life of dancers in Andalusia.

Sharon Sapienza lived and breathed flamenco.

She lived and breathed flamenco and considered herself half Spanish and half Maltese.

Called Just Dance, the book, aptly launching just after Mother’s Day, contains contributions from friends and colleagues.

COVID-19 was “a gift not a curse” for Edwige as she got down to fulfilling her goal that kept her alert and busy in hard times.

On the other hand, however, the pandemic also put paid to plans to take her daughter’s last production, Mu-Danzas Boleras, to a UK theatre, as had always been her ambition.

Edwige and Sharon Sapienza. Photo: Family hand out

But Sharon’s dreams did not die with her, and her mother stepped into her shoes, together with the Sharon Sapienza Foundation, set up by her parents in 2015 to keep her professional memory alive by promoting Spanish classical dance from the 1930s.

Promoting studies in flamenco, with a particular emphasis on escuela bolera, it continues building on Sharon’s contribution to the revival of an almost extinct dance form.

“Sharon’s dream was always to take the show to the UK. I wanted to fulfil that, and I had organised for all this to happen,” Edwige said.

Mu-Danzas Boleras was due to be staged at the Peacock Theatre in London’s West End in April 2020, but the pandemic meant the plans fell through. Post-COVID-19, theatres in the UK are fully booked.

I feel her and Frank very close to me. I feel their presence a lot

“With a company of 12, you cannot be on a waiting list and book the dancers at the last minute,” Edwige said.

Mu-Danzas Boleras 1812-2012 was considered the epitome of Sharon’s work, showcasing 200 years of Spanish dance, which she had researched for four years.

The cover of ‘Just Dance’ written by Edwige Sapienza in honour of her late daughter Sharon.

She had wanted to finish it in time to stage it by 2012 and did so that February, spending the whole year putting up the show all over Spain.

But before she could take it beyond, a plan she was actively working on, she exited the world stage, leaving the dance community in shock and her doting parents, who had followed and supported her journey in the arts, devastated, having lost their daughter in her prime.

A year later, before her father Frank died, her parents brought the show home to Malta to pay tribute to their daughter.

The COVID-19 pandemic put paid to Edwige Sapienza’s plans for a West End performance of ‘Mu-Danzas Boleras’.

The show will go on and it is now being staged again at the Manoel Theatre next month, a decade after her death, with all proceeds going towards the foundation.

Edwige lugged six suitcases of props and costumes from Madrid, where they had been in storage, and returned to sign on the dancers for the Malta show, undeterred by the red tape and travels involved.

She has also invested in a “Spanish cultural space” in Naxxar, and her next wish is “to find someone in the EU to buy the show and take it around”.

Sharon Sapienza's castanets.

Edwige has re-invented herself in her daughter’s name, considering herself the empresario, the figure fronting the show, while the foundation’s co-founder, Caroline Mattocks, is wearing the producer’s hat.

But behind the business-like approach are still tears as she describes the huge satisfaction the publication of the book has meant to her.

“I feel her and Frank very close to me. I feel their presence a lot,” she said.