I write between articles encouraged by the entries that the friend Alberto Rodriguez Peñastrong is coming up to your wall Facebook in recent days in reference to the great Sevillian dancer Petra Chamber. On my blog the News Tuner, which was very active between 2009 and 2015 and brings together two hundred entries, and which I ended up converting into book, I dedicated several of those entries to La Cámara and other artists from the mid-19th century, Pepita Vargas, Nena Perea, Carlos Atané, José María Dardalla, Francisco Pardo, the Ruiz family, all of them architects of the transition that the dance and music of the bolero dances underwent (not to be confused with the “Escuela Bolera”, much later) towards the genre flamenco, wanting to show how the same people who were successful in the theaters of Spain, Europe and America were changing their accent to give way to the new school, the flamenco one, which became more popular in the cafes, because of Silverio, Serneta, Patiño or Macarrona, among the many flamencointelligent people of the last third of the Romantic century.
It seems proven that it flamenco It is the natural consequence of the bolero, as this was in turn of the majo. The process of gypsyization of the national song and dance was imposed on the bolero dances, and was made drinking from seguidillas boleras, majas, gitanas, tiranas, cachuchas, danceable fandangos, zorongos, polos, zarandillos, cumbés, tononés, jotas, pregones, gaitas, contradanzas, guarachas, caballos y princesas, jácaras, jopeos, minuets afandantados, coplas and songs, with their heels, well stopped, shakes, respingos, zarandeos, changes, the well-known candle dances accompanied by the beat of the barber guitar, with sticks, mandolins, violins, palmas, tambourines, zambombas and drums. With all of this, cooked over a slow fire, a good portion of the expressive language of flamenco, essence of salt, majesty and grace of the Andalusia.
1847 is a distinguished year, and belongs to the “prodigious decade of our great-great-grandparents”, Gamboa dixit. Precisely in the year in which Lazarus Quintana He performed in Madrid as a singer of the genre flamenco, next to the gypsy girl Dolores, a certain Mr. Vera, national dance director in several companies at the time, to whom is attributed, among other things, the choreographic composition of the jaleo de Jerez that was danced so successfully by the Guy Stephan, took charge of the gypsy bustle and other acts at a dance given at the Circus Theater Madrid native under the title of The Bullfighter, as noted in the report published by the Madrid newspaper The Spanish On December 26 of that year: “To see national dances you don't need to go to the Circus, and it's enough to see those that are danced daily in the Cruz, Príncipe and Instituto theaters.” So far, so normal, except for a final note where he states that "both are Spanish dances quite Frenchified," also granting Vera the credit of being "one of the boleros that most conspire against our national dances. His compositions lose more and more of the Spanish sandunga and acquire the form and contours of the dances of the French school." This Frenchification of the bolero perpetrated by Vera surely led to a radicalization of the national accent in reaction to then embrace what flamenco as a purely Hispanic language (look at that dancing with a mustache and goatee!!! Who would think of that? Read read).
"Gypsy culture represented the essence of the "cañí" (Spanish culture) and there was no room for French-style tendencies. The same thing had already happened fifty years earlier, when the tonadilla, upon becoming Italianized, began its decline. Thus, we could conclude that the tonadilla is to the zarzuela what the bolero was to the flamenco. There is debate!
Two years later, Antonio Ruiz –not to be confused with Ruiz Soler “El Bailarín”– would be presented in Madrid, November 1849, and in the chronicle of The Herald Emphasis is placed on the “affectation so common in boleros”.
It seems clear that in those years the bolero was becoming Frenchified and losing its original traditional style, which was surely cultivated in the twenties and thirties by boleros, such as the one recognized by the Cádiz theater. Luis Alonso, brother who was from The planet, both uncles of Quintana. Hence, the artists between 1845 and 1855 cut to the chase and promoted the new genre, which was called Flamenco, thus nominated for the first time, to date, in the year of 1847, out of pure aesthetic necessity, in keeping with the times.
In my opinion, it flamenco It arose as an indigenous reaction to the tendency of bolero dances to become French (the same form that can be seen today in the Bolero School recovered by Angel Pericet when he arrived in Seville in 1882). The aforementioned Mr. Vera wanted to stylize the national school in such a way that he left the dancers no other option than to gypsy their accent, ending up calling the new genre flamenco. Not in vain, Petra Cámara in 1853, and Pepa Vargas The following year, they began to dance soleá. After all, the gypsy style represented the essence of the "cañí" (Spanish style), and there was no room for French-inspired tendencies. The same thing had already happened fifty years before, when the tonadilla, upon becoming Italianized, began its decrepitude, according to the term José Subirá, consuming its reason for being. Thus, we could conclude that the tonadilla is to the zarzuela what the bolero was to the flamenco. There is debate!
