Vicente Escudero
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Vicente Escudero Urive (born October 27, 1888 in Valladolid , † December 4, 1980 in Barcelona ) was a Spanish flamenco dancer and choreographer .
As a dancer and theorist, he shaped the development of flamenco in the 20th century. He was the first to venture to stage the Seguiriya , which was previously only practiced as a musical form, as a dance. Of great originality and creativity, he was at the same time a passionate fighter for pure traditions.
Life
Childhood and youth
Vicente Escudero grew up in Valladolid in the Barrio de San Juan district . His father, a shoemaker, strove for a prosperous life for his son and looked for a promising profession for him, but unsuccessfully. The boy was drawn to music, dancing and the gitanos in his neighborhood. Their children were his playmates.
Enthusiastic about their music, he practiced at every opportunity in the zapateado , the rhythmic drum drum. He was particularly impressed by the metallic tones that he could produce on manhole covers. He preferred their sound to the dull tone of the ground and the darker vibrations of wooden panels. So he created his own compositions. Often he got in the way of his accompanying guitarist, because he didn’t stick to the traditional rhythm, the compas , that they had internalized. One of his first compositions was El tren , the train. After a pianissimo start, the piece picks up speed and volume, imitates the rumbling and rattling of a train in curves and on a straight route, and even reproduces the stop and the foot noises of passengers getting on and off at the stations.
Hard beginnings
However, he was aware that this was not yet flamenco. He seriously wanted to learn , enterarse , as they said in those days. To be Enterao meant not only mastering the rhythm of each dance, but also giving the guitarist a precise signal when a change was appropriate, a falseta or a desplante . Of course that assumed that the guitarist was also an enterao . So in 1905 he moved to Madrid and performed in the renowned Café La Marina . He could only stay there for a few days, because his awkward rhythm hindered the other musicians. They found that he was not enterao and he later admitted that they were right.
However, he was not discouraged and moved on to Santander . After all, he got through a season in the Café Brillante there . His next stop was Bilbao . There he met at the Café de las Columnas on Antonio el de Bilbao . Vicente Escudero came to appreciate him as "a sincere and good person who did not mind teaching the secrets of flamenco when they were faced with a guy with passion and talent." From Antonio he learned the rhythmic and technical basics of dance.
Antonio told him about El Jorabao from Linares ; so he went there to see him dance. Apparently he also spent some time in Granada's Sacromonte neighborhood.
With his now trained artistry Vicente Escudero appeared regularly in the flamenco cafés, the cafés de cante . Now he no longer had any problems with his music colleagues, but he was not satisfied with this work. He had to endure the insolence of drunkards, the disrespect of rich snobbugs who treated him like a cheap buffoon. So he went on tour again, toured the villages of Spain. He appeared in the cinemas that were opening across the country at the time, danced a farruca or a funny tanguillo - performances that were extremely poorly paid. In addition, at that time there was a constant risk of being picked up and forced into military service.
So he moved over to Portugal. Accompanied by a guitarist, he toured this country from one end to the other for a year.
Paris
Vicente Escudero traveled from Portugal to Paris, made his debut there in a small theater in the Eiffel Tower , and appeared in various small cabarets and variety shows. Shortly afterwards, from 1912 to 1914, he traveled to major European cities, England, Switzerland, Austria, Sweden, Germany, Italy, Russia and Turkey. When war broke out in 1914, he was in Munich, from there to Italy, Egypt, Palestine, Persia and India.
In 1920 the Théâtre de la Comédie organized an international dance competition. With his dance Pasodoble garboso Vicente Escudero won first prize and a thousand francs . With the money he settled in Paris and had his parents from Valladolid follow him. The price opened the great stages of Paris to him. In order to make money, however, he had to adapt to the tastes of the public and dance the tangos that were in vogue in Paris at the time. Soon he had the reputation of a salon dancer, a danceur mondain .
The patron , the owner of the famous dance café, in which he was engaged at the time, finally allowed him to dance flamenco for three evenings. To the incredulous astonishment of the patron , it was a huge success; Word quickly got around about the performance on the first evening, and on the second and third evenings the place was packed. The patron then offered him a lucrative contract; Vicente Escudero, however, preferred a commitment to the Olympics . The impresario Sergei Djagilew became aware of him at the Olympia and hired him. Vicente Escudero canceled this contract in 1922 and began to build his own company . In addition to flamenco, he added other Spanish dances to her repertoire, choreographed music by Manuel de Falla , Joaquín Turina , Isaac Albéniz and Enrique Granados . With this program, the company finally made its first appearance in Paris in June 1924. In 1925 he caused a sensation with a performance of El amor brujo by Manuel de Falla, in a choreography by La Argentina . He himself danced the male lead, Carmelo.
During those years he met the dancer Carmita García; she became his dance partner and life companion.
He was now at the height of his fame and could have enjoyed its fruits. Instead, he preferred to join the Parisian artist and literary scene, to attend their evening parties. He got to know Fernand Léger , Juan Gris , André Breton , Luis Buñuel , Man Ray , Pablo Picasso , Joan Miró and others, and dealt with the concepts of Cubism , Surrealism and Dadaism . He began to draw his own sketches of choreographic concepts and dance poses. These are now exhibited in the Museo del Baile Flamenco in Seville.
However, he by no means gave up the dance. Together with his friend AM Cassandre , he bought a small café and danced there for artists and intellectuals:
«Nunca en mi vida he bailado tan a gusto, ni he conseguido comunicar tanta emoción a mis bailes como en este escenario. En aquella sala tan íntima (…) sentía la impresión de bailar para mi solo, o mejor aún, aunque parecza pretencioso, para toda la humanidad presente y futura. Creaba mi proprio ritmo y sentía el placer de dominar y someter la musica escrita a mi capricho, demostrando que el baile es anterior a ella como forma de expresión artística. »
“Never in my life have I danced with such pleasure, and never have I conveyed so much emotion in my dances as on this stage. In that intimate hall (...) I had the feeling that I was dancing for myself, or better, even if it sounds presumptuous now, for all of humanity of the present and future. I created my own rhythm and felt the pleasure of mastering the written music and submitting it to my taste. So I showed that dance precedes her as an artistic form of expression. "
Financially, however, the venture was a disaster.
At that time Vicente Escudero also created one of his most original pieces, the Danza a los motores : to the sound of two electric motors, he danced a flamenco on the stage of the Salle Pleyel . In June 1927 he organized a benefit performance for the victims of the Second Moroccan War . On the occasion of this event, the critic of the El Heraldo ruled :
«Tiene la silueta fina e elegant de un gitano puro y ha dado a su arte una recia personalidad inimitable. Es en el baile español lo que Picasso en la pintura y Falla en la música. Para llegar a Escudero hay que pasar antes por los otros dos. »
“He has the fine and elegant figure of a pure Gitano and has given his art a strong inimitable personality. In Spanish dance he is like Picasso in painting and Falla in music. In order to understand Escudero, one must first deal with these two other two. "
Avant-garde dancers
In 1929 Vicente Escudero appeared in the Avenida cinema in Madrid with an avant-garde program with choreographies to music by Manuel de Falla, Isaac Albéniz, Enrique Granados and Ernesto Halffter . He himself had drummed for it in a press campaign; The expectations of the audience were correspondingly high. Well-known artists such as Pastora Imperio , El Estampío , Pepe de la Matrona , Perico el del Lunar and Luis Yance performed. There was a scandal on the open stage when the Andalusian dancer El Estampío turned to Vicente Escudero with a grand gesture and said to him: "Señor Escudero, you cannot dance." Then he pulled a pair of dancing boots onto the stage and said: " Put them on! They will teach you how to dance flamenco. ”Part of the audience applauded El Estampío, others whistled him out. The event nevertheless took its course.
From Madrid he moved on to his native city of Valladolid and from there to Bilbao, Saragossa and Barcelona. The critic Alfonso Puig wrote in the Novidades Barcelones :
«Escudero (...), enjuto de carnes, aires de iluminado, de una virilidad guerrera, hace crepitar las tablas del escenario y ensordece con sus audaces polifonías de percusión, taconeo, castañuelas de metal, pitos y uñas sonoras. (...) Su acerada lucidez penetrante y revulsiva, monumental y profunda, expresiva y auténtica es más propria a la emoción que al agrado. »
“Escudero (…), spindle-thin, with the charisma of an enlightened man and the masculinity of a warrior, made the stage boards crackle and stunned with his bold percussive polyphonies of footsteps, castanets made of metal, pipes and resounding nails. (...) His biting, penetrating, inciting clarity, monumental and deep, expressive and authentic, is more of an emotion than a courtesy. "
When Anna Pawlowa died in 1931 , Vicente Escudero accepted the invitation to appear at a performance in her honor in London. This was followed by trips and performances in Argentina and the USA. The critic John Martin highlighted the characteristics of his performance in a detailed review in the New York Times : his dismissive charisma, his surprising rhythm changes, his spontaneity and constantly present ability to improvise and his perfect mastery in foot techniques.
His repertoire at that time consisted of solos and couple dances with Carmita García. Outstanding individual pieces were the Farruca Danza del molinero from Der Dreispitz and Ritmos sin música , a piece that, according to his own words, was created as a spontaneous improvisation in the Salle Pleyel in Paris. At the couple dances, Carmita García and he made a lasting impression:
- the Danza del miedo from El Amor Brujo ;
- Castilla y Córdoba by Issac Albéniz;
- Los requiebros by Enrique Granados;
- a series of original Alegrías he La Sonanta called;
- a gorgeous iota danced .
In 1935 he again performed El Amor Brujo , this time with his own choreography, at the Radio City Music Hall in New York . The female lead, Candelas , was danced by Carmita García. John Martin wrote that he did an excellent job of both director and dancer, and that the Music Hall had rarely seen a performance of similar quality. In 1939 he staged a performance in Barcelona with María de Ávila , and in 1941 in Madrid at the Teatro Español .
For years - in his own words five years - he thought of interpreting the Seguiriya as a dance. At first he hesitated, fearful of committing sacrilege, but eventually he came to the decision that it would be worthwhile to support her emotions with a physical representation, a "plástica arquitectónica". Together with his guitarist Eugenio González, he prepared the arrangement. His simple, straightforward interpretation was committed to the essentials; she made neither concessions to the public nor unnecessary embellishments. He presented them in 1939 at the Teatro Falla in Cádiz and in 1940 at the Teatro Español in Madrid and in the "Palacio de la Música" in Barcelona.
After this idea, Alfonso Puig wrote to himself that Vicente Escudero's genius had reached incomparable size and that the plastic form for the pathetic, intimate quintessence of the Gitano dance had been created. It is without a doubt his masterpiece.
In 1942 he choreographed the dance scenes in the film Goyescas and performed there with his entire company.
Draftsman, author, theorist
At that time, Vicente Escudero had long since made a habit of drawing his dances before putting them into motion:
"Antes de bailar un baile lo pinto."
"Before I dance a dance, I paint it."
In 1946 the Irish Hispanist Walter Starkie organized the exhibition conference El misterio del arte flamenco at the Instituto Británico de Madrid . Vicente Escudero chaired this conference; he and his wife Carmita García contributed the illustrations. A year later his book Mi baile was published . In it he described how he fought his way as a dancer and above all his artistic conception of flamenco. In 1948 he exhibited his drawings Dibujos automáticos in the " Galería Clan " in Madrid . In 1949 he gave another exhibition conference at the Ateneo in Madrid . In 1950 the booklet Pintura que baila appeared with 32 of his drawings.
In 1951 he finally presented his famous Ten Commandments , the Decálogo del baile flamenco, in El Traschacho in Barcelona, a meeting place for the Barcelona art scene .
The late years
In 1955 Vicente Escudero performed at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris. Then he traveled to the USA and danced in the Playhouse Theater . Once again John Martin wrote rave reviews, for example: "With his famous 'Ritmos flamencos primitivos' he danced with a beam of light that made his feet shine, yet he showed the finest, most brilliant and most rhythmic Zapateado of our time." Then he went on tour through twelve cities that ended at the starting point of New York. In 1957 he appeared with a zapateado in José Valdelomar's short film Fuego en Castilla . The film was shown at the 1961 Cannes Festival . In 1959 he published another book, Arte flamenco jondo .
In 1960 he organized the Magno Festival de Cante Grande y Puro at the Teatro de la Comedia in Madrid. At this benefit event for the benefit of the Provincial Hospital, he practiced another art: singing. He performed Tonás , Martinetes and Deblas . Pepe de la Matrona , Jacinto Almadén , Pericón de Cádiz , Rafael Romero , Juan Varea , Manolo Vargas , El Pili and Jarrito sang with him, accompanied on guitar by Pepe de Badajoz , Vargas Araceli and Andrés Heredia .
In 1961 Carmita García fell ill with progressive paralysis. Vicente Escudero withdrew from the stage, devoted himself entirely to his mate, and spent all of his fortune on her treatment. When all medical efforts were of no avail, he traveled with her to Lourdes in the hope of a miracle. This did not happen, however, and Carmita died in 1964.
Vicente Escudero continued dancing until 1969. In 1963 he married the Catalan dancer María Márquez . In 1965, at the age of 77, he danced his solos for the last time in Madrid's Tablao Las Cuevas de Nerja . He then went on tour one last time to France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, Germany and Italy. In 1968 he led conferences in various major Spanish cities under the auspices of the Dirección General de Teatro y Espactaculos . In 1974 this institution honored him for his life's work in a big celebration in the Teatro Monumental . The Ballet Folklórico de Festivales de España took part in the performances for this celebration, as well as many well-known artists, including Antonio Gades with his company and many others.
Vicente Escudero suffered from great financial difficulties in the last years of his life. He spent these years with his wife in the shared apartment on Plaza Real in Barcelona. He died of heart failure on December 4, 1980 at the age of 92.
Artistic conceptions
Pride, poise, straightforwardness
The guitarist Andrés Batista described Vicente as a strong character with an impulsiveness like a volcano, but of great humanity, inquisitive, always ready for honest information to questions: a straightforward, direct personality.
«¡Baile de hierro! ¡Baile de bronce! Así bailaría yo. "
“Dance out of iron! Dance of bronze! That's how I would dance. "
With these words, Escudero's book Mi baile closes . John Martin confirmed that this attitude actually found expression in his dances: “His conception of art is elementary to the point of brutal. He moves with the ease and grace of a magnificent animal, with his chest stretched and feet that pave their way with the elegance of a cat. ”Escudero himself was aware of this catlike nature. He himself wrote: "Watching the cats when they were playing or getting angry, studying the movements of tigers, panthers or lions, that fascinated me."
Upright posture, the body haughty stretched: this is how he impressed his audience. “It had the beauty of Gothic architecture.” The towering shape of the trees served him as another natural model for his dance. He took the slow fall of their leaves as a model for the representation of gravity in his dances. Male charisma was very important to him. He set Bailar en hombre as the first of his Ten Commandments . For example, as a man, you should keep your fingers closed, he wrote: finger movements are a characteristic of female dance.
Ornaments would only have destroyed this impression. He called jumps and swirls around with his arms garabatos , scribbles that are alien to pure flamenco. It is wrong to transfer concepts from French or Russian ballet to flamenco. Running around is also wrong. Instead, calm, accentuated sequences of steps are required.
spontaneity
Vicente Escudero was a perfectionist in his work. Nevertheless, he usually let his performances arise spontaneously in front of the audience. If he trusted the singers and the guitarists, he didn't rehearse with them beforehand.
"El que baile sabiendo anticipadamente lo que va a hacer, this más muerto que vivo."
"Anyone who knows beforehand what they are about to do while dancing is more dead than alive."
He championed the idea of free, spontaneous dance. Nothing annoys him more than the formality of carefully “choosing” certain music, “arranging” a dance or “ballet”, he wrote. He listens to the music during the interpretation. Formalisms are good for other activities, but not in art, and even less so in dance.
The Ten Commandments
Vicente Escudero wrote that everyone who strives for purity in dance should inviolably adhere to the following commandments:
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Publications
- Vicente Escudero: Mi baile . Montaner y Simón, Madrid 1947.
- Vicente Escudero: Pintura que baila . Afrodisio Aguado, Madrid 1950.
- Vicente Escudero: Arte flamenco jondo . Estades Artes Gráficas, Madrid 1959.
Web links
- Vicente Escudero in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Mauricio Marín: Archivo Vicente Escudero. Retrieved August 4, 2016 (Spanish).
- Vicente Escudero (1965). (Video) In: YouTube . (Arxiu NO-DO), August 12, 2014, accessed on December 24, 2015 (Spanish, archive recording: short interview, making a choreographic sketch, Alegría ).
- Gemma Ortega: Vicente Escudero, un genio polifacético. In: Albidanza.com. December 4, 2014, accessed on December 29, 2015 (Spanish, homage , with a video clip from the Goyescas film , one of his drawings and an autograph ).
Notes and individual references
- ↑ José Luis Navarro García: Historia del Baile Flamenco . Volume II, p. 92-93 .
- ↑ bold stamping
- ↑ «una persona sincera y buena que no tenía inconveniente en enseñar los secretos del flamenco, cuando veía en un muchacho afición y facultades»
- ↑ José Luis Navarro García: Historia del Baile Flamenco . Volume II, p. 94-95 .
- ↑ José Luis Navarro García: Historia del Baile Flamenco . Volume II, p. 95-97 .
- ↑ Flamenco - Vicente Escudero. In: andalucia.com. Accessed December 24, 2015 (English, biography and critical appreciation).
- ↑ although he was not a gitano, see Javier Barreiro: Vida y obra de Vicente Escudero. January 11, 2012, Retrieved June 30, 2016 (Spanish).
- ↑ José Luis Navarro García: Historia del Baile Flamenco . Volume II, p. 101 .
- ^ "Señor Escudero, usted no sabe bailar."
- ↑ «¡Póngaselas! Ellas le enseñarán cómo se baila flamenco. »
- ↑ José Luis Navarro García: Historia del Baile Flamenco . Volume II, p. 101-102 .
- ↑ José Luis Navarro García: Historia del Baile Flamenco . Volume II, p. 102 .
- ↑ José Luis Navarro García: Historia del Baile Flamenco . Volume II, p. 103 .
- ↑ José Luis Navarro García: Historia del Baile Flamenco . Volume II, p. 105 .
- ↑ José Luis Navarro García: Historia del Baile Flamenco . Volume II, p. 97-98 .
- ↑ José Luis Navarro García: Historia del Baile Flamenco . Volume II, p. 106-107 .
- ↑ José Luis Navarro García: Historia del Baile Flamenco . Volume II, p. 107 .
- ^ Javier Barreiro: Vida y obra de Vicente Escudero. January 11, 2012, accessed December 29, 2015 (Spanish).
- ↑ José Luis Navarro García: Historia del Baile Flamenco . Volume II, p. 108 .
- ↑ José Luis Navarro García: Historia del Baile Flamenco . Volume II, p. 109-110 .
- ↑ José Luis Navarro García: Historia del Baile Flamenco . Volume II, p. 113 .
- ^ Festival de Cannes. Sélection officielle 1961: Courts métrages. In: Cannes Film Festival website. Retrieved December 29, 2015 (French).
- ↑ José Luis Navarro García: Historia del Baile Flamenco . Volume II, p. 115 .
- ↑ José Luis Navarro García: Historia del Baile Flamenco . Volume II, p. 116 .
- ↑ José Luis Navarro García: Historia del Baile Flamenco . Volume II, p. 117 .
- ↑ Ángel Álvarez Caballero: El toque flamenco . Alianza Editorial, Madrid 2003, ISBN 978-84-206-2944-5 , p. 200 .
- ↑ José Luis Navarro García: Historia del Baile Flamenco . Volume II, p. 103-105 .
- ↑ José Luis Navarro García: Historia del Baile Flamenco . Volume II, p. 103-104 .
- ↑ Ángel Álvarez Caballero: El toque flamenco . S. 201 .
- ↑ Quotation marks according to the original quote by Vicente Escudero.
- ↑ Vicente Escudero means in particular the renouncement of unnecessary embellishments, as described above.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Escudero, Vicente |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Escudero Urive, Vicente (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Spanish flamenco dancer and choreographer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 27, 1888 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Valladolid |
| DATE OF DEATH | 4th December 1980 |
| Place of death | Barcelona |