Special Feature. Excerpt from the book ‘La Argentina
vista por José Clará’ (1948)
The most universal version
of flamenco dancing
Flamenco-world.com, December 2008
Translation: Joseph Kopec
Chapter VII
Antonia Mercé
‘La Argentina’ |
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THE creations of the ballets by Antonia
Mercé were very important, definitive for the
history of Spanish dancing at the theater. Hardly anything
of true choreographic quality has been done in the national
ballet apart from her creations. Mentioning the names of
the works which the tireless fantasy of her plastic art
found shelter in is to provide a list of the most select
Spanish music from Albéniz to Halffter, from Granados
to Falla. On the other hand, her taste for the folkloric
– in the well-understood sense of the word - led her
to take advantage of every regional or local dance that
she knew. So, for example, she takes a long journey to Salamanca
in order to get some steps of charro dancing, which only
a wizened old man knows who dances rigidly, with unique
grace, with short, tiny steps. Later, in her journeys abroad,
her faculties to assimilate are sharpened to the unfathomable.
She brings a dance from the Philippines, ‘La Cariñosa’,
inspired by the dancing from those whereabouts. It is an
excellently composed dance, based on the suggestion of the
tropics, with slow, oily movements, during which she always
plays with a lace kerchief in her hand. The expression,
joyful at times, tense at others, always tender, which she
was able to instill in this small piece of cloth was somewhat
captivating; she seemed to have endowed it with a life of
its own, with a warm life, with an intimate light trapped
in the lace. When she premiered this dance in Paris, the
Philippine colony there congratulated her, overcome with
genuine emotion.
In the trance of these assimilations, the
most definitive side of her character can be seen: her wonderful
sense of stylization. She takes advantage of any dance,
even if it is completely jumbled and confused, and in four
characteristic features she includes it in her rich, juicy
repertoire. An instant thus comes when she dances a jota
aragonesa, a Cuban rumba, a “suite” of Argentinean
dances, which consists of three dances: Condiciones, Bailecito
and Tango; a dance from Valencia, the entire rich range
of Andalusian dances. All of these stylizations, a prodigy
of contention of gesture and expressive eloquence, are still
valid for all the dancers who want to perform folkloric
dance seriously, with criteria of refinement and good taste.
And nevertheless, it is time to declare
all the same that all of these stylizations, being a select
show, never ever produced the impression caused by their
version in Andalusian dance, which has been the most universal
version of flamenco dancing without making it lose its own
expressive style.
She never stopped dancing the purest of
flamenco dancing in a complete, finished, overflowing way.
An exceptional witness, flamenco “cantaor” and
composer Fernando el de Triana, flatly states in his invaluable
book ‘Arte y artistas flamencos’, published
in 1935, that Antonia Mercé is not just the first
Spanish dancer at theaters, but also that she is the best
“tablao bailaora”. And he adds straight afterwards
“that she can alternate and still teach the best bailaoras
with a bata”. “When she gets to Madrid, her
friends often throw her – Fernando de Triana writes
- an Andalusian-style party. The most reputable cantaores,
tocaores and bailaores gather, and even the old, now retired
ones. They come in order to work for a night just for her.
Flamenco art is done at its best. And after they have all
used up their repertoire for La Argentina to hear and see
them, then she is the one who starts dancing for the other
artists to see her. That is how we have seen her dance;
after the most renowned maestras and creators, accompanied
by the best guitarists. And therein lies her merit: Antonia
dances as classical and as flamenco as the maestras, and
they and the jondo professionals are the ones who used to
be most thrilled by her”.
“The audience doesn’t know
how to discern this, but it feels it; and on seeing that
together with the movements and steps of her invention,
she puts together dances of a modern nature with bailes
for guitar and the very hard Andalusian styles, it guesses
that they aren’t falsified, but rather are genuine,
that which a few bailaoras and some teachers still preserve.
And she rewards the most thunderous ovations with what is
Spanish guts, that which she has known how to preserve and
perfect without falsifying”.
This statement by an artist so orthodox
and linked to the most cutting scholastic of flamenco dancing
and cante, like Fernando de Triana, is of the greatest importance.
The version which La Argentina does of the seguidillas,
of the dazzling zapateado, of the Andalusian tango, of the
malagueña, is of vital strength, and it adapts to
a straight, clear, intelligible style for all audiences.
It can be said that she used to have inside of herself in
combustion every plastic art problem of Spanish dancing.
When Carmen Amaya conquers America, she does so in just
the opposite way. Nobody understands her dancing; she herself
doesn’t understand it. It isn’t an intelligent
effort: it’s a storm of burning, juxtaposed forms.
She dances the way La Argentina always said you shouldn’t
dance: from the waist down, with your thighs and your feet.
But La Argentina didn’t consider that the blood from
below the waist weighs and burns like no other when you
dance for real. And Carmen
Amaya’s blood has the hardest stuff of the entire
history of our dance. That is why Carmen Amaya has been
able to dance in America for ten years, remaining absolutely
impervious to everything, with an impenetrable gypsy façade
which hasn’t been wounded by anything. This gypsy’s
baile doesn’t know anything about itself, but it seizes
all of the spectator’s vital forces when dancing.
It is something exceptional and inimitable which can leave
no trace, just as the wind leaves no trace in the flames
of a blaze. Today, we still experience Antonia’s lesson
in norms and style purely and cleanly; and it’s just
because she used to dance with her head and with her heart.
