Centenary Antonio Ruiz Soler

In 1952, the director Edgar Neville asked Antonio to prepare an original choreography for the film Duende y el misterio del flamenco (titled Duende in English). Not only did it feature the first ever dance routine set to a martinete, it also included a first (and shorter) version of the Sonatas, one of the most successful works of Soler Senior’s latter career. In this first version, it was already evident that his bolero influences broke with the tenets of the traditional school, from the dance steps to the arm motions, from the drumbeat to the Goyaesque aesthetic. The bolero school that Antonio presented within a palatial stage set, with infantas, courtesans and halberdiers, represents a combination of bolero and highly technical classical dance. A year later, for his Antonio Ballet Español company’s first programme, he included all eight sonatas in the suite, performed by the whole company of 35 dancers over the course of several scenes. This debut took place at the Festival Internacional de Música y Danza de Granada, in the Generalife Gardens.

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In the 1940s, when Rosario and Antonio lived and worked in the United States, the couple appeared in several Hollywood musicals. One of these was Hollywood Canteen (1944), written to boost the morale of soldiers fighting in the Second World War. In the film we hear an orchestral adaptation of El Vito, a type of traditional Andalusian music – and the dance number that accompanies it gives an insight into the shows that the couple toured America with: a rapid intertwining of spins and taps that prized spectacle over technique. Rubén Olmo has chosen this dance as a nod to Antonio Ruiz Soler’s cinematographic side, which would continue in Spain with his career as a leading actor.

Rubén Olmo and Miguel Ángel Corbacho have created four pieces inspired by Antonio Ruiz Soler’s style, aesthetic and character. These choreographies run through the history of traditional flamenco, all the way from its origins, a progression that is reflected in both the costumes and the music. This journey through the song, dance and music of primordial flamenco passes through the flamenco palos that are often found in Antonio’s work: the zorongo, the martinete, the taranto and the caracoles. It follows the blueprint for set design that he used in his flamenco performances, but with more modern choreography.

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When Esther Jurado, leading guest dancer of the Ballet Nacional de España, asked the Argentinian choreographer and dancer Carlos Vilán to create a classical Spanish choreography for her, he pictured her in bata de cola dress, dancing to the score of Asturias de Albéniz – without even knowing that her mother was Asturian. He named this choreography Leyenda and first unveiled it at the gala of the Bucharest Opera in 1998.

As Director of the Ballet Nacional de España, Rubén Olmo wanted to include it in this programme because Albéniz’s composition was a staple in the repertoire of Antonio’s Ballet, although in those days it was performed by a male dancer. For Olmo, Carlos Vilán’s creation was a good fit for the programme because the choreographer had a deep understanding of the style of the maestro. Carlos Vilán worked closely with Antonio as répétiteur for El Rocío, a work that María Rosa originally commissioned from Antonio for her company.

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Antonio Ruiz Soler’s interpretation of Pablo Sarasate’s score boosted his profile as a dancer and choreographer, and it became one of the mainstays of his repertoire from its debut in 1946 at the Teatro Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires. The influence of claque on the technique of this particular zapateado makes it a perfect example of virtuosic, stylised flamenco. In 1959, Antonio performed a version of this solo as he walked down a country road in the film Honeymoon, an Anglo-Spanish co-production directed by Michael Powell, visually reminiscent of Gene Kelly in An American in Paris. Over the years, it has been performed by countless leading dancers of various companies, each one trying to follow Antonio’s maxim: “Dancing it means caressing the floor; you have to speak with the floor, not kick it”.

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This choreography elevates the stylisation of the popular dances in which Antonio Ruiz Soler was a true maestro. In this case, Antonio reimagined the Galician muñeira through classical eyes, combining corps de ballet and pas de deux. By including touches like scallop shells and floral arches, he took Galicia’s most popular dance from the town square to theatres around the world, showcasing the harmony and poetry of Ernesto Halffter’s notes on the legend of Santa Compaña.

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