SPECIAL FEATURE. SERGE DIAGHILEV AND FLAMENCO
Diaghilev’s ‘Flamenco’
Ballets
S.C./ Flamenco-world.com, July 2009
At different spots around the world,
not including Spain, the centennial of the creation of the
Russian Ballets by Serge Diaghilev is being celebrated this
year. It is a slip-up that the anniversary should not concern
this country, since it nourished the famous company with
inspiration, music, dance and even painting. One of its
most successful shows was ‘El sombrero de tres picos’
(‘The Three-Cornered Hat’) by Manuel de Falla,
an influential production whose staging and premiere in
London in 1919 involves the tragic story of Sevillian bailaor
Félix el Loco which the Ballet Nacional de España
recreated five years ago. But the company highlighted by
Pavlova and Nijinski went still further in its interest
for the jondo, since in 1921 it premiered ‘Cuadro
flamenco’ in Paris, a lively depiction of the singing
café, which was dressed and decorated by Pablo Picasso,
and starred María Albaicín.
On October 8th, 1916, the daily newspaper
‘La Correspondencia de España’ published
the article ‘Russian Dances and Spanish Art’,
which narrated Serge Diaghilev’s journey to Andalusia
with Manuel de Falla as his guide:
| Sergio Diaghilev,
who last May and June displayed to us the hitherto
incomparable art of Russian pantomimes and dances,
has taken such a liking to our country that
he has traveled to nearly every Spanish province,
studying the music and dance peculiar to each
and every one of them. Diaghilev has been accompanied
on this pleasure and artistic culture trip by
one of his company’s musical directors
and the remarkable painter who did nearly all
the decoration we saw in Madrid a few weeks
ago.
Andalusia! The painter found a wealth of beautiful
tonalities in this bright Spanish region which
he anxiously stored on his palette, combining
colors that made up that radiant light streaming
down upon the Andalusian countryside. Diaghilev
was charmed by the expression, by the rhythm;
by the beauty, in short, by the Andalusian folk
dances.
In his journeys around Andalusia, Diaghilev
has been accompanied by eminent Spanish composer
Manuel de Falla, admirable author of La vida
breve. With such an illustrious guide, there
is no need to insist upon how advantageous and
instructive the excursion must have turned out
to be for the art of the Russian artists.
One day when they were in Seville, a young bailaora
was introduced to Falla and Diaghilev.
Young, surly, with pitch black eyes, black hair
and a mouth of pearls and coral… She was
the archetype of the Andalusian bailaora, since
moreover, bright joy glimmered upon her face,
with correct lines and an admirable flexibility
of movements.
They watched her dance, and were delighted.
Ángeles Morillo - that’s the name
of that new star of Andalusian dancing - feels
the art of dance intensely. Her style approaches
that of Pastora
Imperio, especially in the classical.
Needless to say that Diaghilev made proposals
to Ángeles Morillo so advantageous to
the beautiful Andalusian that she did not hesitate
an instant to accept, joining the Russian dance
company which, as will be seen later on, will
also include Spanish dances.
A flamenco bailaor has also been hired.
Diaghilev, who is not sparing in expressing
his admiration and liking for Spanish art, in
his desire to make it known, has assigned eminent
Spanish composers to write pantomimes and ballets
with Spanish motifs and music.
The first Spanish show which the Russian dance
company will perform is by Manuel de Falla.
Its subject is the same as that of Alarcón’s
novel The Three-Cornered Hat. The scenes are
combined by the illustrious Martínez
Sierra.
This pantomime show will probably be called
El corregidor y la cortijera, and will premiere
in Rome.
This work will be followed by others by Spanish
musicians.
(…)
|
|
The Russian businessman’s fascination
for what is Spanish began that spring, when his ballets
stopped at the Teatro Real in Madrid with works such as
‘Firebird’ and ‘Petrouchka’, both
by Stravinsky. Serge Diaghilev’s stay in Spain gave
him the chance to meet up again with Manuel de Falla, who
he had met some time earlier in Paris. And then what the
article transcribed here narrates occurred. Although the
first idea was to work on ‘Noches en los jardines
de España’, in the end the Granada-born composer
used Pedro de Alarcón’s novel ‘The Three-Cornered
Hat’ (1874) - based on a popular romance - to satisfy
the demand for Spanish art which the director of the internationally
famous Russian Ballets had. In two years, he transformed
the theatrical pantomime ‘El corregidor’, premiered
in 1917 at the Teatro Eslava in Madrid by the Gregorio Martínez
Sierra Theater Company and with musical director Joaquín
Turina, into the ballet ‘Le tricorne’. The show,
with wardrobe and backdrop by Picasso, choreography by Massine
and musical directing by Ernest Ansermet, premiered at the
Alhambra Theatre in London on July 22nd, 1919.
And it was then when one of the most mysterious
episodes in flamenco history took place. According to the
article in ‘La Correspondencia’, that anonymous
bailaor who Diaghilev hired in Seville was Félix
Fernández García (Seville 1893 • Epson
1941), who was later named Félix
el Loco. He left with the company for London, where
the show would be rehearsed and premiered. Apparently, the
bailaor lost his mind when he found out that the Miller’s
farruca which he was staging was not going to be danced
by him, but rather Massine. And they say that when he saw
he wasn’t on the posters, he fled the theater, took
refuge in Saint Martin in the Fields Church and broke out
dancing the farruca there… naked upon the altar, so
the legend goes. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, he was committed
to an asylum in Epson, where he died without being claimed
by any family member some twenty-two years later.
Antonio on 'El sombrero de tres picos' |
|
This show and its enigmas have been a source
of inspiration for flamenco past and present. To many, the
ballet (more Spanish and more flamenco) which Antonio
created from ‘The Three-Cornered Hat’ in 1958
even surpassed the original by Massine. Its first version
was performed at Granada’s Charles V Palace in the
setting of the International Music and Dance Festival. Next
came the film, during whose shooting he was imprisoned for
blasphemy. It occurred in the Cádiz-area town of
Arcos de la Frontera, which honors his memory today with
the La Molinera y el Corregidor Interpretation Center. And
today this ballet by Ruiz Soler is the ‘classical’
reference taken later on by José Antonio and Antonio
Márquez.
In his avant-garde way, Israel
Galván recreated Félix’s now mythical
story in his first show, ‘Los zapatos rojos’
(1998). And in 2005, it was captured with great means and
excellent results by the Ballet Nacional de España.
‘El Loco’, directed by Francisco López,
choreographed by Javier
Latorre and musicalized by Mauricio Sotelo and Cañizares,
premiered on September 6th, 2004 at the Teatro Real in Madrid,
and was performed at Barcelona’s Liceo, Seville’s
Teatro Maestranza and Jerez’s Teatro Villamarta. And
it is curious that this recent production, having been staged
after being tucked away in a drawer for so long, hasn’t
been recovered in this centennial year by the public company.
Either that, or recover Diaghilev’s version or Antonio’s.
But no. As Roger Salas criticizes in ‘El País’,
“since the years 2006 and 2007, the National Institute
of Performing Arts and Music has rejected as many projects
as have been presented to it, among them, the revival of
The Three-Cornered Hat in its original version
by Leonidas Massine with designs by Pablo Picasso on the
part of the Ballet Nacional de España (which has
bought the rights to use the original production from its
protector, Milan’s Teatro alla Scala)”.
So if this influential ballet is forgotten,
much more so is the show ‘Cuadro flamenco’,
with which Diaghilev’s Russian Ballets tried to reflect
the jondo flavor of the singing cafés. Which still
has decisive importance in flamenco history, despite María
Teresa Ocaña’s detailed description at Danzaballet.com,
which states that this sequence of flamenco dances with
wardrobe and backdrop by Picasso “was a show of lesser
magnitude conceived to exalt flamenco dancing and music;
the latter’s choreography and music was made up simply
by a group of flamenco bailaores who danced the same way
as at a tablao before a stage by Picasso. It premiered at
the Théâtre de la Gaité Lyrique in Paris
on May 17th, 1921, and once the performances were finished,
it was not revived”. By the way, the lead bailaora
was María
Albaicín.
Just eight years after this reference to
traditional flamenco, Serge Diaghilev suddenly passed away
in Venice. But the artistic and business renovation he spread
throughout Europe and America never died. Stars such as
Anna Pavlova and Vaslav Nijinski came out of his ranks,
his ways of presenting dance to the public were taken as
a paradigm, and Spanish art in the shape of dance, painting
and music definitively joined the international stage panorama…
no matter how much memory fails here and now.
