Flamenco dancing maestra Pilar López
dies at the age of 96
Forever, maestra
Silvia Calado, March 25th, 2008
Pilar
López has been a part of and witness to an
entire century of flamenco dancing history. La Argentinita’s
sister is recognized as one of the great maestras of flamenco
and Spanish dancing, the one who trained the generation
consisting of bailaores of the likes of Antonio Gades,
Mario Maya and El Güito. And also as one of the great
international disseminators of Spanish dance, through
a company which she kept going for three decades. Prizes
such as the Calle de Alcalá 2005 and the Max de
las Artes Escénicas 2006 are the last ones that
have been awarded to the artist, who passed away in Madrid
on March 25th at the age of 96.
When she received the Calle de Alcalá
Award at the 2005 CajaMadrid Flamenco Festival, she not
only politely gave thanks and she not only gave heartfelt
wishes to her beloved pupil Antonio
Gades, but rather she taught an unforgettable lesson
to everyone present by dedicating the statuette “to
every dancer and dance colleague”. That nice gesture
highlighted her greatness.
Pilar López with El
Güito and Mario Maya on
Festival Flamenco CajaMadrid 2005 (Photo Daniel Muñoz)
Not long before then on that very same
stage at the Teatro Albéniz in Madrid, she had
received the personal tribute of another of her students.
In the setting of the festival A Corazón Abierto
2003, El
Güito offered the show ‘Mis recuerdos’
to his maestra. And she thanked him, even doing a little
spin por bulerías which left everyone flabbergasted.
By then, she’d already spent nine decades in this
world.
And although she’d been retired
for some time, she had never completely broken away from
the profession. In 2002 she was approached by the then
director of the Ballet Nacional de España, Elvira
Andrés, to propose for her to collaborate in the
revival of one of her greatest works, the choreography
she had created in 1952 for ‘El concierto de Aranjuez’
by Joaquín Rodrigo. And she really tried to resist.
With a sharp sense of humor, she avoided new ‘assignments’:
“I sing one song: I’m not at the age to love
you, I’m not at the age for choreographies”.
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Pilar López with
Alejandro Vega |
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That
press conference at one of the sumptuous halls at
the Teatro de la Zarzuela was another of her master classes
and another sign of her love for baile: “All my
life I’ll remember the good times rehearsing with
the Ballet; I was rejuvenated and cheered up by the devotion,
the professionalism, the affection, the respect”.
In exchange, she gave them advice as valuable as that
of valor: “I dared to do five preludes by Debussy,
since I was quite progressive in my time”. And she
was even bolder. The maestra affirmed that she was the
first one to sing 'Se equivocó la paloma', “long
before Serrat, in a suite I premiered in Buenos Aires
in the early fifties”. The daring thing was to bring
it to a theater on Gran Vía right in the middle
of Franco’s dictatorship... with Alberti still in
exile.
And she’s never stopped sharing her experience,
her wisdom. We very recently had a conversation with dancers
and choreographers Nani Paños and Rafael Estévez,
directors of Dospormedio & Cía., who were presenting
their show ‘Flamenco XXI’ at Festival de Jerez.
They were still surprised that during the documentation
and set-up phase of that show, “Doña Pilar
López” welcomed them at her home, incredible
in itself: “There in that drawing room in her house
there’s the piano on which Lorca
and La Argentinita rehearsed ‘Canciones populares
españolas’, and it has a room decorated for
her by Vicente Escudero” intact. But what they were
seeking at that “living museum” was her advice.
The most valuable piece of it wasn’t in the shape
of words, but of attitude: “For that woman to spend
her time on young people... that’s love for dancing”.
