Matilde Coral

Matilde Coral. Matilde Corrales González (Seville, 1935). Dancer

The only person awarded the Llave de Oro del Baile (Golden Key for Dance), in 1975. She has also been awarded other top prizes: two nationals in Cordoba, the Pilar López and the Encarnación López la Argentinita (1967); and the National for Dance by the Professorship of Flamencology, the same she won with Los Bolecos almost a decade before. In 1955 she was working at the tablao El Guajiro and met Rafael el Negro who was also twenty and they soon married. She worked with Pastora Imperio while very young and this left its trace on her art for ever: "She was a an unrepeatable woman in everything; in temper, in figure (...) Sometimes she did not have to dance, her arms alone were pure dance, steeped with unsuspected flamenco genius". Since 1967, when she opened her first dance school, she has alternately worked as a teacher and actively as a dancer, although she scarcely does now. She has performed in films. She is a Teacher Qualified by the Conservatory of Dramatic Art and Dance of Cordoba. She enjoys teaching work because, as she says herself, she caresses her work. She is perhaps the greatest defender of the Sevillian school of dance, this being the school she insists on for her pupils: artistic movement and majesty over the great strength now prevailing among young dancers.