Antonio Gades never complained about being referred as a “dancer”, instead of being considered a “bailaor”. He really didn’t care about those things. He didn’t even consider himself an artist, but rather a culture worker, and he would get annoyed if anyone called him maestro. I was often surprised by this inconsistent discrimination by those who didn’t consider his baile to be jondo enough to bestow the title bailaor flamenco upon him. The same happens when some purists in the opera genre criticize Plácido Domingo for having recorded Mexican songs or Argentinian tangos. Stupid!

In my opinion, if someone dances por soleá, he’s a “bailaor” at that moment, and if someone dances Falla’s “El sombrero de tres picos”, then he’s a “dancer”. If someone does both things, like it’s the case of the great Antonio Gades, why can’t he be considered a bailaor when dancing por seguiriya, and dancer when dancing El Vito? I don’t understand why there is a need to set him apart, because when it comes to style, Gades was very jondo, serious and stunning as bailaor, with his baile macho, as it was called in the old days, although today the flamenco feminists (femijondistas, like Bohórquez calls them) may scream to heavens when hearing such appellative.

I’ve never quite understood such arbitrary exclusion. It’s true that Antonio was, in his own words, a payo(non-Gypsy) from Elda (Alicante) who grew up in Entrevías (Madrid), but apparently it’s irrelevant having been the favourite of that great artist of baile, Pilar López, or having smashing success for many years all over the world with his Suite Flamenca, which was performed together with Bodas de Sangre as the second part of his shows. The Suite was all baile flamenco, which is what he had been doing since he started to perform at the tablao Los Tarantos in Barcelona, accompanied by the guitar of the underrated Emilio de Diego, his partner in toil for more than two decades and the author of the wonderful music in Lorca’s drama.

Antonio used to tell me how in those years, when faced with an unreceptive public, we would make use of the helpful TAMIRÚ, which enabled him to win over the most cold-hearted spectators, knowing that dancing Tarantos, Mirabrás and Rumbas would melt down the iciest public in applause. Having Calderas de Salamanca or Juan Peña Lebrijano as cantaores, he would bring out pellizcos flamencos like no other, piercing the soul of the public with every step, or rather, like he would say, with what is between each step.

Not to mention Gades, the choreographer, who besides creating the choreographies for the above-mentioned shows, also composed the choreographies for Carmen (which was performed more than ten thousand times), Fuego (El amor brujo), which needed an alternate tittle since the Falla family didn’t authorize the use of the original name, and his last production, Fuenteovejuna, for which I had the privilege of selecting, composing and arranging the music for its tours through the world’s best theaters. Five productions in a career of fifty years (not counting Alfredo Mañas’ Don Juan, with music by García Abril and other small productions of his younger years). Five masterpieces in a whole life dedicated to baile, while others make a new production every year. We left in a box, unfinished, El Quijote, a project which was well advanced, but was cut short by the illness which took his life in 2004.

Elenco de la película “Bodas de Sangre”