Biography

Carmen Amaya, Barcelona, 1913-Bagur (Gerona), 1963. Flamenco dancer and singer. Daughter of the flamenco guitar player El Chino, niece of La Faraona, sister of Paco, Leonor, María, Antonia and Antonio Amaya and married to Juan Antonio Agüero.

Also known at the beginning as La Capitana.
She began practicing flamenco since she was a child, accompanied by her father, and at the age of six debuted in the Restaurant Las Siete Puertas of her native city, to continue dancing in the Tavern El Manquet, in the Chiringuito de La Puerta de la Paz, in El Cangrejo Flamenco, Casa Escaño and in many other places in Barcelona.
She danced in Paris for the first time at the Palace Theater, where Raquel Meller had acted together with La Faraona and Carlos Montoya, returning after to Barcelona to continue her tour in several important stages, such as La Taurina, The Taurine one, where she was discovered by the critic Sebastián Gasch , who wrote an applaudatory article about her.

In 1923, she travelled for the first time to Madrid, to dance in a tavern in the basement of Palacio de la Música. The following year she did a tour around different Spanish cities, being part of Manuel Vallejo’s Company.

Back in Barcelona, she danced in the Teatro Español, recommended by José Cepero. In 1929, she danced in the Colmao Villa Rosa, managed in Barcelona by Miguel Borrull and, in 1930, she acted in the Exposición Internacional. She signed a contract with Carcellé to go on tour around several cities, for example San Sebastián in 1935, and Madrid where she was introduced to the people of Madrid by Luisita Esteso, during a show in the Coliseum.

The same year she worked in the theaters of Madrid: La Zarzuela, with Conchita Piquer, Miguel de Molina and other outstanding artists; and in the Fontalba. She also performed the film La Hija de Juan Simón, with Angelillo, and took part, in Barcelona, in a musical show. After acting, again as main character in the movie María of the O, she began a tour of the Spanish counties in 1936, being stopped by the civil war in Valladolid.

She moved to Lisbon, having her première at the Arcadia Café, accompanied by the pianist Manuel García Matos, the cast including her father and Pelao Viejo. Later she travelled to Buenos Aires, where she had her premiére at the Maravillas theatre, with Ramón Montoya and Sabicas, having such enormous success that even the police and firemen had to take part, in their second day of performance, to maintain order during ticket sales. After a whole year at the Maravillas theater, she did a tour around the interior cities of Argentina, afterwards to return to the Maravillas once again, and remain there for another whole season.

From 1937 to 1940, she danced in Uruguay, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina, Cuba and Mexico in whose capitals, in 1940, she performed her show in the Fábregas Theater as well as in the Tablao El Patio. During this stage of her artistic career, in which she incorporated several members of her family in her group, she made many films in Buenos Aires together with Miguel de Molina, and was also admired by the musicians Toscanini and Stokowsky, who complemented her in public.
In 1941 she moved to New York, dancing in the Beach Comba, to pass soon to the Carnegie Hall, together with Sabicas and Antonio de Triana. The then president of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, invited her to a party in the White House, and presented her with a bolero style jacket embroidered with diamonds as a gift.
She appeared in the cover of the magazine Life and was admired by the most famous stars of the cinema and American art. In 1942 she became one of the main attractions of Hollywood, where she performed a version of Falla’s “El Amor Brujo”, in the Auditory Bowl, to an audience of twenty thousand people, with the Philharmonic Orchestra.
She was also in a large number of movies, among them Dreams of Glory, Piernas de Plata, Vea a mi Abogado, Carmen Amaya y sus muchachos, Las Amarguras de un Torero, El sombrero de Paraná and Sigan al chico, producing at the same time her first audio-tape recordings.
She returned to Europe and danced in the Campos Elíseos Theater of Paris, also in London and Dutch theaters, from where she went to Mexico and then again to New York and London, to continue her tour to South Africa and Argentina, returning finally to Europe.
In 1947 she returned to Spain, in the Theater Madrid, with the show entitled Embrujo Español, which was also a huge success in the Princess Theater of London in 1948.
During the following tour around America, she travelled Argentina in 1950. The next year she came back to Spain to dance in the Tívoli Theater of Barcelona, after several performances in Rome. She continued acting in Madrid, Paris, London, and several cities of Germany, Italy and other European countries. In London, the English Queen congratulated her, and a picture appeared in the press with the following headline: "Two queens face to face". In the following years, Carmen and her company went on permanent gigs around Northern Europe, France, Spain, United States, Mexico and South America.
In 1959, she was a great success at the Westminster Theatre of London as well as in Teatro de la Ópera in Madrid. The same year, Carmen Amaya’s Fountain, named in her honour, was inaugurated in Barcelona. Once in Barcelona she celebrated a charity ball in the Palacio de la Música, which proved so successful they had to turn away hundreds of hopeful viewers.
Her last film was Los Tarantos, directed by Alfredo Mañas and Rovira-Veleta.
Desired by the main theatres of the world, from 1960 to 1963, year of her death from a renal affection, she carried out continuous tours around Europe and America, until her illness stopped her while being in Gandía, after having danced for the last time in Málaga.
Her death was a massive grievance for the flamenco world, posthumously being rewarded with the Medal of the Tourist Merit of Barcelona, the Isabel la Católica’s Ribbon and the Title of Adoptive Daughter of Bagur. Her funeral summoned a large number of gypsies from Catalonia and from different points of Spain and France. She was buried in Bagur, where she lived her last days. Nowadays her corpse rests in Santander, in the vault of her husband's family. In 1966, three years after her death, a memorial monument was inaugurated in Montjuic’s Park in Barcelona; in Buenos Aires a street was named after her; in Madrid, in the Tablao Los Califas, she was paid a homage with great artists, among which Lucero Tena, Mariquilla and Félix de Utrera. Also in 1970, she was offered a homage in Llafranch (Gerona).
The character of Carmen Amaya, artist that enjoyed in life the general and enthusiastic admiration of all her art colleagues, has been described by several critics, flamenco students and writers, as well as exalted by poets, among them Fernando Quiñones, author of the poem Soneto and lirics for Camen Amaya. Of these comments we transcribe a selection: Vicente Marrero:
"In Carmen Amaya we can see the astonishing conviction with which she usually dances. Ungraceful, thin, small, almost incorporeal little gypsy. Brunette, with a face of tragic and remote idol, Asian cheekbones, of long eyes loaded with premonitions. Disheveled, gnarled, with nervous arms as a bad bug, stiff and violent. With her gypsy grace, it is not only one more millionaire of North America, but one of our bigger dancers that has done well, in spite of some features not always appropiate, with the secret of the dance which cannot be explained by the light of any technique; she was born with the dance inside, a dance made of ancient gold. Carmen Amaya, that is her name, is not a different woman in each one of her dances, as it usually happens to other big figures of the dance.
She is always the same one, and she has not intended another thing. The fiction doesn't belong to her art. She is not a dancer; she is a bailaora. With her art of reduced environment, of personal more than scenic valuation, she has known how to become recognised in all the countries, where she has conquered frantic admirers. Astonishing if we think that very often, the flamenco dance is a dance usually only for Spanish, mainly in some regions of the peninsula... Carmen Amaya's dances have wanted to be seen, by some people, with exaggeration a morbid character, trickily pathetic, with correspondence to a world fashion that breaks the classic feelings. It doesn't reach that unhappy belief the secret of her success and it is not of the case to refute it. It is true that Carmen Amaya lavishes the nerve and the speed; furthermore: it has been criticized that she doesn't use nor feel the majesty nor the stillness so characteristic of the bailaoras in necessary contrast with the vertigo that arrives just on time, in which she -say those that criticize her - with so much air and voltage, evaporates the flamenco's same essence.
Superficial and without consideration, she has even been considered as the blind, rough force, irrational, friend of shocking effects , the flashing typism that gives in to easy demands. But Carmen Amaya is not an intuitive dancer, nor a seudobailaora without canons that improvises, with a cent body, wisdom and grace. Gifted as the most, she conserves the gypsy architecture of her dances, and she is -what could never be Lola Flores and her imitators- a master when she wants to dance according to the rules of the flamenco dance, in whichi there are two very different chances: the stopped one and the furious one. Carmen Amaya 's appearance, her extraordinary success, gave its effects in a moment when the Spanish dance seemed to grow drowsy in a maniera that aesthetically didn't go beyond the good taste. Some French critics have explained it as a return to the violence. Their explanation, possibly, is more elementary. It is a return to the force originary tensing of the dance. Dance, hers, with a virtue that, in a particular way, used to hide the castanets of the Argentina: virtue of making think even until the same frontiers of the mysterious. It doesn't matter if we see her over and over again. She always surprises. It is not known what she wants. It is often not known where she goes. And when we realize it, we notice it like one notices the lightning in its sudden zigzag, loaded with all the electricity of nature. It could be said of her dance all that is wanted; but the most puritan in the flamenco, so keen of traditions, ignoring some steps out of place or some sensationalism, would not have to object anything to her infused science, if she gave more exit to her arms, which looked not so well in her flamenco next to the attention that prodigiously pays to the feet, without forgetting, of course, that the flamenco is always in evolution, in constant creation."

Sebastián Gasch: "Suddenly a jump. And the little gypsy danced. The indiscribable. Soul. Pure soul. The feeling made flesh. The tablao vibrated with unheard brutality and incredible precision. The Capitana was a gross product of Nature. As all the gypsies, she must have been born dancing. She was the anti-school, the anti-academy. All she knew she should have already known it when she was born. Suddenly, the spectator would feel subdued, overturned, dominated by the energetic conviction of the Capitana's face, by her ferocious dislocation of hips, by the bravery of her twirls and the fierceness of her turns whose animal ardour was executed together with astounding accuracy. They are still registered in our memory as indelible badges, the rabid battery of her heels and the fickle game of her arms which, rising up, excited, or falling down, exhausted, abandoned, dead, smoothly moved by the shoulders. What caused us deeper impression when seeing her dancing was her nerve, that twitched it in dramatic contortions, her blood, her violence, her wild impetuosity of bailaora of breed".
Alfredo Mañas: "Before Carmen, before her dance, the gypsies keep a respectful silent that, quickly, becomes a waterfall of commendations without measure. And the commendations let place to the pride that justifies and it exalts the race."