portrayal of toreros, Gypsies, serenos (night-watchmen), and serenades beneath balcony windows, and dancers who ended in proper flamenco desplante (defiant), replete with “olés!”
The Rose of Granada tells the story of a young virgin, Rosita, played by a very blond French music hall star, Mariette Sully. Rosita, although betrothed by her mother to the Marquis de Vera-Cruz, falls tragically in love with a matador who leaves her for a pretty young Granadan dancer.61 Upon hearing the news of the matador’s other love, Rosita falls to the ground in fits of rage and anguish.
The musical was first performed in 1911 in Brussels at the Théâtre des Variétées, beginning a yearlong run in February 1912 at the Olympia Theater in Paris. On a theatrical level, the story was unsophisticated. But as an entertainment extravaganza, which was the purpose intended by its producers, it was a box-office triumph.62 “The great success of this musical,” said Comoedia Illustré, “goes to the dance, which was admirably executed by an extraordinary trio, including Mado Minty, a supple and beautiful mime.” Rafael Pagan, “consecrated after her long run at the Odéon in the ‘Jardins de Murcie,’ stamped out the flamenco rhythms with marvelous traditionality.” Finally, “the Spanish dancer, Argentina, vibrating and voluptuous, her flashy heels covering the musical scales, handled her castanets with sensual pleasure which … astonished” her audience.63 Her charisma and talent were now confirmed by the French popular press and read by “le tout Paris,” the smart set of Paris.64
By 1916, in her first North American performance, Argentina’s rhythmic ability was also confirmed by the New York press. About La corrida, one journalist remarked that “Madame Argentina’s synthesis of the bullfight is one of the most spectacular and picturesque. You will find in it the festive and spectacular side: the horses, the banderillos. It is no sketch; rather, it is a synthesis, scientifically deduced from the general movement of the bullfight.”65
Guy de Pourtalès’ description of La corrida bears witness to the young choreographer’s second essential feature: her fervent nationalism. Evident in this sketch was Argentina’s use of the archetypal Spanish theme, death. Pourtales reiterates poet García Lorca’s oft-quoted lecture on the play and the theory of duende, in which he says that Spain is “a nation of death, a nation open to death.”66 It was Argentina who capitalized on the imagery of the bullfight as representative of Spanish culture. In Lorca’s words, “the popular triumph of Spanish death” captured in “the supremely civilized festival of the bullfight” symbolized the “final, metallic value in death” worshiped by Castilian and Andalusian culture.67 It was in this, Argentina’s first Parisian choreographic success, that she began to discover the importance of an aesthetic representation of Spanish nationalism through dance. From 1912 to 1936, Argentina would follow the nationalist artistic pulse of García Lorca, Manuel de Falla and representatives of the Generations of ’98 and ’27. Lorca discovered an artistic supporter and mirror in Argentina. “All the classical dances of this great artist,” he said, “are her unique signature, at the same time that they are the signature of her country, of my country.”68
The great flamencologist and bailaor, Fernando Rodriguez el de Triana, reinforced Lorca’s words in 1957, when he dedicated his famous work on the artists of the flamenco genre to Argentina. “Antonia Mercé, La Argentina,” he said, “is the messenger dove of flamenco art; the best bailaora de tablao. This is her genius, that Antonia danced as classically and as flamenco-like as the masters and that these masters and professional jondo dancers were enthralled by her performance.”69 Argentina, in the early stages of her career, had become a star who, in her aesthetic emphasis, provoked any Spaniard to reflect upon his country and, perhaps, about the time through which he had lived.
By 1912, Argentina had earned her place alongside Pastora Imperio, Fornarina, Candelaria Medina, and La Monteverde. Her variation on the Gypsy flamenco technique—the formulation of her own dance language on Spanish themes, never repeated by anyone else—became the primary tool by which Argentina would conquer Parisian audiences.
Costume for Triana designed by Néstor de la Torre. Collection Paravicini.
Costume for Triana designed by Néstor de la Torre. Collection Paravicini.
Costume for Tango Andaluz. Collection Cátedra de Flamencología, Juan de la Plata, curator, Jerez de la Frontera.
Costume for Danza de los Ojos Verdes. Collection Marieemma.
Costume for Bolero Clásico. Collection Institut del Teatre, Barcelona.
Costume for La Cariñosa. Collection Mme. Gaube-Bertin.
Costume for La Charrada. Collection Mariemma.
Costume for Lagarterana. Collection Paravicini.
| GIVING GRACE A BODY: FROM THE MUSIC HALL TO THE CONCERT STAGE (1912–1923) Internal rhythm, poetic emotiveness, elegance, plasticity, everything in Antonia Argentina sings a hymn to grace. — El Universal (1915) I believe she both created a new form of dance technique combining the elements of classic technique with all Spanish folklore, as to have the result of a great theatrical art on the stage … but she was so clever that she seemed to have completely forgotten the base technique, to be a real “Spanish Dancer” and not a “ballet-dancer” dancing folklore, what they all do now. — Monique Paravicini | 3 |
At the beginning of her career, performing first in the cramped spaces of Barcelona flamenco bars (1904–7) and then on the vast out door stages of French cafés chantants (1910–12), Argentina relied greatly on the flamenco vocabulary that she had learned from Gypsy women in the south of Spain. Flamenco’s interpretive technique, competitive edge, and highly composite body of individual dance styles nourished her. In search of a movement vocabulary with which to speak, Argentina discovered in flamenco her means of communication. Flamenco’s body, its attack, line, plasticity, elasticity, and dramatic potential, provided it for her. In its emphasis on the way in which the foot attacks the floor, from ball to heel, and in the sinuous reach of the arms into the air, flamenco offered Argentina an emotionally charged dance as well as an expandable musical form.
In the early twentieth-century cabarets of Europe, the dancer filled many roles; she sang, acted, mimed, and danced.1 The French author Colette wrote in 1910, “the music hall has made of me a mime, a dancer, even a comedienne occasionally, but it has also turned me into a very honest, hard-working tradeswoman; the least gifted of women quickly knows her business.”2 She continued, “Music hall artistes are so little known, so despised and misunderstood. They are romantic, proud, full of an absurd and absolute faith in Art. Only music hall artists would dare to declare with sacred fire, as they do—An artiste must not—cannot accept—cannot allow. They are proud, even if sometimes they complain bitterly about that filthy life.” This was the world Colette satirized, and the world that Argentina would leave—Colette’s description of “earning 150 francs a day” would never satisfy a diva like La Argentina.3 (By 1930, Argentina would earn 10,000