Alegrias de Cadiz</I>
Alegrias de Cadiz
Carmina danced from the time that she took her first steps in her family's tiny whitewashed house in the Triana section of Sevilla. As a teenager, she continued to dance on the streets and in the bars and tascas along the Calle Sierpes in Sevilla until one day through providence or coincidence she met Manolo el cojo, the finest dance coach in Spain.
Manolo the crippled was the antithesis of what a flamenco dancer should look like; balding, paunchy, middle aged with one leg two inches shorter than the other, Manolo knew more about flamenco dancing than any man alive. He knew and felt what the dance critics call honda de cara, the facial expressions that range between agony and orgasmic ecstasy. He knew, understood and could do and teach honda de manos, the art of sculpting beauty in the air. When he first saw Carmina dance in El Rincon del Gitano Flaco, a tasca in Sevilla's Barrio de Santa Cruz, he knew in an instant that he had, at last, found the medium through which he could express his genius.
With meticulous, painstaking, attention to detail Manolo refined Carmina's intuitive, God given, talent until every trace of vulgarity had been removed. It was only when Manolo felt that Carmina knew and understood as much as he, and in his opinion had become the incarnation of artistic purity, that he presented Carmina to the Madrid public. This was Carmina's debut.
Sitting alone on a straight backed chair, Carmina began to weave her spell.
She transported us to a gypsy cave lighted only by candlelight; in the shadows were two guitarists sitting on straight back chairs. They leaned their heads over the guitars on their thighs to listen to their own music. Their fingers crawled over the strings like spiders as they went through the intricate falsettas to Soleares.
From the side of the stage, like an Islamic muezzin calling the faithful to prayer, came the raspy voice of a cante hondo singer in a protracted lamentation.
The singer stepped out of the shadows to where Carmina was seated; for several minutes he stood beside her repeating his lamentations while the guitars played in counterpoint.
Carmina rose from the chair; in two quick feline steps she was in the center of the stage where she stood, back arched, head erect, face turned upward.
The guitarists followed Carmina's lead. Slowly her left hand moved in serpentine rhythm with the guitars. Her left arm rose until it was fully extended above her to complete an arc with her right arm which was thrust downward behind her.
The guitars stopped. The lamentations ceased. She was Aphrodite, and the focus of all attention.
"Ole," I said.
The guitars started again; Carmina ebbed and flowed from the guitarists then back to the singer. Her hands and arms undulated like the wings of an angel in flight. With their music the singer and guitarists charmed her, and with her body she seduced them. Her face was illuminated with the torment of creating and the sweet agony of release. The tempo of the music increased. She swayed, lifted her skirt and clicked her heels against the floor. Pulling a comb from the back of her head she let her hair fall over her face, and she taunted the guitarists like a wild creature with a final explosive flourish.
The lights dimmed. There was a deafening silence. Then the room was filled with shouts.
"Ole!" "Bravo!" "Viva la Carmina," the people screamed.
Carmina de los Reyes burst upon the Madrid flamenco scene as a meteor flashes across an inky midnight sky. Myriads of other dancers were paled by the brilliance of Carmina's art and talent. Overnight this tall slender gypsy girl from Triana became to the art of flamenco dancing what Manolete had been to bullfighting, numero una, the greatest, the most adored, the most worshipped. When Carmina danced critics raved, women wept and men lost their hearts to her. Carmina was the essence of grace. She was poetry in motion.
That such talent, natural beauty, grace and duende, the spirit that motivates all art, should be combined in one person was nothing short of a miracle. The duende of dance was hidden in Carmina's soul, and it used her arms and body to express itself. But Carmina had a secret that very few people knew.
After several minutes of applause, the lights went up. Carmina blew kisses to the crowd, accepted bouquets of flowers and finally bowed and left the stage. The other dancers returned.
"If you'll excuse me," Manolo said. "Carmina and I have a little routine that we do together. Please don't leave." He laughed and pushed himself up from the chair then limped to an exit door.
The dancers on stage went through several more routines. The girls danced Sevillanas, a man and a woman together did La Petenera, then they again all left the stage. The lights were lowered. A set to make the stage appear like a dance studio was moved in place. The lights went up. Manolo, followed by a guitarist, limped on stage.
From the door in the set came a knock. Manolo limped to the door, opened it and greeted Carmina who was supposed to be coming for a dance lesson.
"We're going to work on Alegrias de Cádiz today, Carmina," Manolo said.
"Muy bien," Carmina said and dropped her purse on a chair. When this number is performed in a regular performance, and not as a staged dance lesson, the dancer wears a black traje corto, the high waisted, tight fitting trouser suit that is worn with a short jacket over a ruffled bullfighter's shirt.
For this performance, however, Carmina, who was supposed to have just come off the street, was wearing a pair of tight fitting jeans that looked as though they had been molded to her slim hips. Over her breasts and the upper part of her body she wore a sleeveless white silk blouse tied in a knot to expose her bare midrif.
Manolo told the guitarist to start.
Carmina slipped into the zapateado passage in which the dancer using heel and toe taps out an increasingly complex staccato of rhythms.
Manolo interrupted her. The guitarist stopped playing "No, no," he said and limped to the center of the stage. "Like this."
The guitar started; Manolo tapped out a fierce heel and toe staccato. All traces of his limp were gone.
The audience applauded.
Manolo and Carmina danced together. They were the incarnation of the shape of motion and grace.
Manolo moved to the side of the stage; Carmina continued. Her long brown body was liquid fire. As she reached the climax her hair was a swirl of glistening black, and the frenzy of her passion had the excitement of love making. The expression on her face was as though she looked at the face of God. It was pure ecstasy. So intense was the emotion she radiated I could feel a flicker of fire in my own loins.
Before Carmina had finished the room rocked with applause and shouts of"Ole." It was clear why they called this particular dance Alegrias. Alegrias is happiness.
Manolo and Carmina bowed, smiled and blew kisses to the audience. They were both happy with their performance, and it showed.
Gene McCoy
Madrid - 1962
Carmina's Secret: Her mother was an American and her Father Spanish. Carmina was born in Brooklyn, New York.
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