20 años sin Antonio Gades: el revolucionario que hizo entender el flamenco en el mundo

Antonio Gades, Flamenco Dancer Widely Considered the Best of His Era
Artículo de: Ángeles Castellano

Cuatro publicaciones recientes rescatan el legado de un bailaor y coreógrafo que sigue presente en las coreografías de los bailaores actuales

“Antonio Gades ha hecho grandes cosas, pero creo que en tanto en la danza española como en el flamenco creo que es insuperable”. Rubén Olmo (Sevilla, 1980), director del Ballet Nacional de España, sólo puede usar superlativos para describir a Antonio Esteve Ródenas, más conocido como Antonio Gades (1936 – 2004), bailarín y coreógrafo que creó una escuela que aún hoy se mantiene en el flamenco y la danza española. Este sábado se cumplen 20 años de su fallecimiento a causa de un cáncer que le detectaron cinco meses antes de fallecer, y su legado se sigue manteniendo vivo, gracias tanto a la Fundación que lleva su nombre y dirigen su viuda, Eugenia Eiriz y su hija mayor, la actriz María Esteve, como a quienes mantienen vivas sus coreografías: la Compañía Antonio Gades y el propio Ballet Nacional, del que él fue su primer director, entre 1978 y 1980.

Ángeles Castellano : Continued here in Spanish …

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20 years without Antonio Gades: the revolutionary who made flamenco understood in the world

Four recent publications rescue the legacy of a dancer and choreographer who is still present in the choreographies of current dancers.

“Antonio Gades has done great things, but I think that in both Spanish dance and flamenco I think he is unsurpassed.” Rubén Olmo (Seville, 1980), director of the National Ballet of Spain, can only use superlatives to describe Antonio Esteve Ródenas, better known as Antonio Gades (1936 – 2004), dancer and choreographer who created a school that is still in use today. flamenco and Spanish dance. This Saturday marks 20 years since his death due to a cancer that was detected five months before he died, and his legacy continues to be kept alive, thanks to both the Foundation that bears his name and is directed by his widow, Eugenia Eiriz, and his daughter. older, the actress María Esteve, as well as those who keep his choreographies alive: the Antonio Gades Company and the National Ballet itself, of which he was its first director, between 1978 and 1980.

Ángeles Castellano: Continued here in Spanish…

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Additional background on this extraordinary artist:

It was when he read the works of Federico Garcia Lorca, the Andalusian poet whose legacy helped to revive the almost defunct flamenco culture from the vulgar tourist caricature encouraged by the Franco government, that Gades was inspired to his vocation.

He formed Ballet Antonio Gades in 1964 and made his London debut in 1970 at Sadler’s Wells. One critic praised Gades and his artists for not trying to cater for foreign tastes too much.

Gades’s intention to turn flamenco into dance-theatre and tell powerful stories with it resulted in his breakthrough production of Blood Wedding, from Lorca’s play, in 1974. Its story of the conflict between true lovers and a vengeful society was to be immortalized in Carlos Saura’s film of it seven years later, set starkly in a dance studio. He later drew on Lope de Vega’s classic about peasant uprising, Fuenteovejuna (1994), using Spanish folk dance rather than flamenco.

His flamenco version of Carmen successfully reclaimed for Spain the French heroine of Bizet’s opera and Merimee’s book, and also became a magnificent Saura film, starring the magnetic Gades himself as Don Jose. A third film, El Amor Brujo (1986), was based on the score of Manuel de Falla, the composer who had worked with Lorca to bring flamenco back to life.

Antonio Gades’s hostility to General Franco made for tension, and in 1975 he quit his country and went to live in Cuba when Franco sentenced five Basque opponents to death. On Franco’s death three years later, he returned as founding director of the Spanish National Ballet, though in 1981 he was once again in political trouble and was removed by the ministry of culture.

While the Saura films catapulted Gades to world celebrity, he remained attentive to flamenco’s roots, and his researching of its 65 separate song-types helped to provide this ephemeral tradition with a lasting record.

He influenced an entire wing of flamenco modernizers to try to apply theatrical narrative techniques to the dance form, but few could equal Gades’s extraordinary flair with storytelling. It was significant that most recent flamenco “innovation” has centered on the more traditional solo dancing.

Gades’s last appearance as a dancer in Britain was in Carmen at Sadler’s Wells in 1996, when he showed that even illness and age had not diminished the fierce spirituality of his performing. A year ago his old company, the Ballet Nacional de Espana, performed his Fuenteovejuna at Sadler’s Wells, once again to great public acclaim.

He died in the hospital after a long decline, and asked on his deathbed that his wife, Eugenia Eiriz, and daughters convey his “most sincere thanks to all those who admired and supported his work, and especially to those who accompanied him during the final stage of his life”.

Tags Antonio Gades, Antonio Gades (1936 - 2004), Rubén Olmo