The mythical ones Cellars Fields, from Córdoba, which opened its rich wines in the light of breeding in 1918, was the place of welcome on Tuesday the 5th for the young man's acuity Jose G. Rabasco Aguilar will present Dancing in Silver (Pictorial and musical avant-gardes in the Ballets de Antonia Mercé La Argentina), a well-planned and well-crafted work that will contribute to the body of knowledge about a very specific period in the first third of the last century.
We are faced with a research work that, introduced in the presentation by Inmaculada Aguilar, professor of Spanish Dance, and foreword by Elvira Andres, former director of the National Ballet of Spain, was validated by the piano of Juan Antonio Sanchez and the author's own castanets, which evoked the pianist and composer from Lleida Enrique Granados with the impressive Dance No. 5 Granada, which reminds us that it was the man from Lleida who dedicated it to Argentina The dance of the green eyes, which would be his last composition before his death in 1916.
Along with this composition, Rabasco recalled The dance of the gypsies (1928) of Ernesto Halffter, with piano and castanets, and the Sevilla, Albéniz, with which we return to the capital of Seville with the satisfaction of devoting ourselves to a book that we recommend to all dance professionals and fans, and that has been made known when we remember the 20th anniversary of the death de Antonio gades, just the year in which the book's prologuist, Elvira Andrés, left the direction of the National Ballet of Spain.
The work we reveal investigates a very specific period, 1927-1929, a time that not only defines a form of dance that creates a theatrical experience that goes beyond technique and choreography, but also places us before a performing art in which dance, music, painting, scenery and costumes merge, to the point of using acting and expression techniques to bring the theatrical story to life.
In this context, the first thing that surprises is something unusual: it is the importance that a young man like José Gabriel Rabasco Aguilar inquires so much into dance that he reaches transforming research into a written memoir. And it reaches this expository-argumentative summit after presenting the process and the results of a search carried out in a synthetic, orderly, clear and coherent manner.
«José Gabriel Rabasco Aguilar, who does not pose hypotheses or leave problems unresolved, provides a copious catalogue of documentary sources and approaches the artist of the eternal smile, the queen of castanets, with relish. He corrects chronological errors about her career and excludes the fictions published about Antonia Mercé»
The writer has pruned the secondary themes, so that the work he presents to us is well focused on the plot in question, thus fulfilling the function of reporting on the course of an empirical and theoretical investigation. In short, an investigation where our writer justifies, argues and explains.
In the period covered by José Rabasco's work, it must be taken into consideration that, when placing the times, a precedent must be valued that we must not avoid. Argentina (Buenos Aires, 1890; Bayona, 1936) resided in 1919, after the end of the First World War, in Paris, which in the twenties was A city without creative limits or moral brakesThe French capital experienced ten years of creative energy – from 1920 to 1929 – and total liberation that resonated like an enchanted parenthesis. So much so that it catalyzed changes that would be exported to the rest of the world.
It is, therefore, the Paris that Argentina knew, the city where talent prevails over fortune and cosmopolitanism displaces the “gratin”, that exclusive social group that one was part of by right, and not by the simple will to gain access. And it is the city, therefore, that changes the scenario of artistic life.
To these cultural components we add the stimulus that awoke in her The Russian Ballets de Diaghilev and its culmination in the premiere of El amor brujo, which would determine the formation of The Spanish Ballets de Argentina (1927-1929), and are therefore conclusive in assessing the new categorization that José Rabasco confers on La Argentina, the artist who marks the definitive takeoff of Spanish stage dance, imposes it on the entire world and, despite her early death at the age of 46 in Bayonne, with this final degree and master's work, although restored, the author persuades us that we are before the immortal core of dance, as confirmed by the cited critic. André Levinson, who in 1928 compared her to the great Russian diva Anna Pavlova.
Rabasco titles his work Dancing in silver, an expression we use to say what we think in a frank, clear and concise way, without beating around the bush or euphemisms. And it focuses on The Spanish Ballets of Argentina between 1927 and 1929, as we say, which implies that the reader concludes how these enhance a new concept of Spanish Dance with “innovative proposals for scenery, music, costume, lighting,” etc., in addition to contributing to history a unique way of staging that, in the same way, and as the author points out, served “as an international showcase for a series of musicians, plastic and pictorial artists who were beginning their careers.”
This evolution, both in terms of representation and themes and artistic approaches, implies new expressions and the creation of “the new stylized Spanish dance”.
«Today I leave a land as wise as Córdoba claiming that, if dance culture is a culminating expression of the Spanish people, it should also be one of its greatest preferences. Otherwise, dance ignorance will continue to be one of the greatest calamities of Spain. There is nothing left, then, but to continue 'Dancing in Silver'»
It all began in November 1927 in northern Germany, where Hamburg hosts the premiere of The Spanish Ballets of Argentina, although its grand presentation was on the Champs Elysees in Paris. And thus, bringing together, although as a laboratory of experimentation, composers such as Manuel de Falla, Ernesto Halffter, Julian Bautista, Gustavo Durán and the support he found in Joaquin Nin, who created his Iberian dance for the protagonist, or painters for the scenery like Nestor de la Torre, Gustavo Bacarisas or Rivas Cherif, among others, marks the beginning of a time that introduces new changes, elevates dance to a level never seen before and consequently makes possible the so-called Silver Age, a time so transformative that it laid the foundations for what was to come.
To this end, José Gabriel Rabasco Aguilar, who does not pose hypotheses or leave problems unresolved, provides a copious catalogue of documentary sources and approaches the artist of the eternal smile, the queen of castanets, with relish; he corrects chronological errors about her career; he excludes the fictions published about Antonia Mercé and, from his research work, not only makes statements that derive from reasoned arguments, but also reaches conclusions with a request included, such as bringing works back to life on stage as they are. The Fandango of Candil, Sonatina, The Smuggler o Spree, with the handicap that we come across, as the author states, "the non-existence of companies that can take financial responsibility for this type of large-scale shows."
We are, therefore, faced with a desire that will hardly ever become a tangible reality. And all because for years we have been advocating, in different forums, that the culture of peoples is measured by the thickness of dust that is kept in the mental library of their leaders. Today I leave a land as wise as Córdoba claiming that, if dance culture is a culminating expression of the Spanish people, it should also be one of its greatest preferences. Otherwise, the lack of dance culture will continue to be one of the greatest calamities of Spain. There is nothing left, then, but to continue. Dancing in Silver.
