Company

Carmen Amaya is one of the legends of our dance. It comes as no surprise that José Antonio chose to give his choreography this title that pays tribute to a woman who was a turning point in flamenco. She was born in Barcelona on 2 November 1918 and died in Bagur (Girona) on 19 November 1963. Her dance, according to those who saw her dancing and from the few images that remain, was powerful, temperamental: the lightning and thunder of a storm in a tiny body that was barely 1.5 metres tall. Dance came from the guts of a woman that often had to overcome physical pain and whose personality led her to tour the world with her flamenco company. With La leyenda, José Antonio wanted to pay tribute to La Capitana –the nickname the Somorrostro gypsy was known by–. The Soleá presented in this programme, performed by three dancers, is a fragment of this choreography that reflects the telluric force of a bailaora who is as iconic as unique.

"Among the artists and aficionados who fill our theatres today, very few ever had the chance to see Carmen Amaya dance live. Those who were fortunate enough to do so define her in a single word: “strength”. Her dancing was indeed powerful, intense and fast, profoundly serious. And so too are the images that, over time, have shaped the legend of this flamenco icon, a universal symbol of the Spanish temperament: Carmen on stage with her arms held behind her and her head thrust forward, almost as if preparing to charge; Carmen dressed as a man; Carmen in a flamenco dress, displaying her extraordinarily muscular arms; Carmen sending the train of her dress soaring into the air with a kick…

Those who knew her personally, however, as José Antonio did, away from the acclaim of the stage, also remember the fragility and humanity of this restless woman who barely stood one and a half metres tall. It is from this memory, conceived as a small personal tribute, that Leyenda was born. A work created by José Antonio with affection and admiration. The project makes no attempt to be biographical or imitative — Carmen was truly unique, and any attempt to imitate her would be futile — but rather seeks to unfold, through a series of images, a kind of allegory of certain moments in her life and her dancing: her strength and her delicacy, her greatness and her solitude, a duality whose opposing qualities could perhaps only ever have been reconciled in Carmen herself.

With this in mind, José Antonio turns to the idea of duality, of division, of a woman splitting into two figures who are at once opposing and complementary: She, the flesh-and-blood woman, and She, the immortal artist who rose from Barcelona’s tablaos to the great theatres of America before suddenly leaving us, forever captivated by the dazzling trail of her endless train."

Rosalía Gómez 

[From the premiere programme]

Alegrías (La Leyenda, 2005)

Suite La Leyenda (2009)