Tampa’s Gasparilla celebration inspired an original, pirate-filled dance production.

In 1993, Christopher Fleming, Artistic Director and Co-Producer for Gaspar—A Pirate Fantasy, saw a group of children in pirate costumes passing under his Hyde Park balcony during the Gasparilla invasion.

He had arrived in Tampa less than a year before, so he wasn’t familiar with the annual pirate festivities.  Fleming, who doesn’t mind being called a workaholic, saw the children and began thinking of a way to combine the festivities with what he knows best: ballet.

“Anything that could get that many people to come out sounded like something we should be involved in,” he said.  “I did some research and discovered that there had never been a ballet or play created for Gasparilla.”

Between jobs in dance, Fleming had pursued a career in writing, so creating a story for a Gasparilla ballet came as naturally as choreographing the work.  His ballet story, Gaspar—A Pirate Fantasy, premiered at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center on Saturday, February 5, 1994 to a sold-out crowd.

Fleming collaborated with David Goldstein, M.D., who composed the score for the two-act ballet.  “I looked at this as a chance to write romantic music, which is my favorite.  It was exciting to start from nothing on this, since new ballets tend to use existing music,” said Goldstein, a Tampa physician who specializes in pulmonary disease and composes in the middle of the night, the only free time he has.

Gaspar captures the broad comedy and melodrama of a Saturday afternoon serial.  Captain José Gaspar, the leader of a merry bunch of pirates, is kidnapped from a noble family as a youngster.  The locket he wears leads him to Don José , the Viceroy of Tampa, who has put a price on his head.  At the very last moment, before his life is taken, Don José recognized the locket and the birthmark on Gaspar’s chest and realizes that is his long lost son.  The ballet closes with a wedding celebration as the pirates join the townspeople in the harbor square.

Gaspar was intended to be an annual performance, but shortly after the first performance, Tampa’s Bay Ballet Theatre ended and the ballet was lost for 16 years.  Sharon Sanchez, Executive Producer, and two of her sons, actually danced small parts in the original performance.  Her love of dance and her tenacious nature prompted her to start on a crusade to bring the ballet back to the Gasparilla festivities.  After a year and a half, she was finally able to get enough support for the cause that the Straz Center agreed to rent space for the production on January 30th, 2011 (the day after the Gasparilla invasion).  “We need to fight for the arts,” said Sanchez.  She is hoping that this will become an annual tradition for families who want something to enhance their Gasparilla experience.