According to Eduardo, it is the exception when a dance performed at a Gipsy party fails to tell a story. Usually the story is improvised from a suggestion of the moment. Satire is popular; if one of the company has undergone an unpleasant experience in love, trade, or dealings with the guardia civil, it is capital for the dancer. Imitations of carriage and mannerisms of the persons represented are carried to that degree of realism made possible by the Gipsy’s eternally alert observation and his expressive body; and he has no artistic creed to cause him to question the value of literal imitation. But the quality of greatness is not what one expects in Gipsy dancing; its contribution is the extreme of skilful, surprising grotesquery.
Notwithstanding the limitations that accompany an insistence on physical facts, the Gipsy’s rendering of the great emotions is said to be impressive at the moment, even though it fails to record any lasting impression. Love, as in the dancing of almost all peoples, is a favourite motive, with its many attendants of allurement, reticence, jealousy, pursuit and surrender. But the repertoire is limited only by the Gipsy’s scope of emotion—hatred, revenge, triumph and grief—his heart is probably about the same as any one’s else, only less repressed by brain. So far is dancing from being merely an act of merriment that it is used in mourning the Gipsy dead.
Flamenco dances as seen in theatres and cafés are compositions made from the elements of Gipsy work; choreographic words grammatically related as is necessary, among other considerations, for accompaniment by orchestras of sober and dependable beings. The task has been admirably done; la Farruca, el Tango, and el Garrotin, the most popular Flamenco dances at present, preserve to admiration the Gipsy qualities. No less credit is due the composers of their accepted musical accompaniments; the indescribable Oriental relation of melody and rhythm, the Gipsy passion for surprise, they have preserved and blended in a manner charming and characteristic. It is only within the past fifty years that the process of adaptation began. Jose Otero, in his chatty Tratado del Baile, traces the movement to its beginning; which like many another beginning, was the result less of foresight than of desperation. The case was of a dancer whose Classic work failed to earn him a living. He strung together some Gipsy steps as a last resort and without hope, and was allowed to try them in a café cantante in Seville. Their success was instantaneous, and continues unabated. Even in the absence of the Gipsy’s inimitable pantomime, there is comfort in seeing his dances under conditions of freedom from argument about extra charges for nothing at all, whines concerning starvation and sickness equally imaginary, care not to lose one’s watch, and pressure to buy useless and foolish souvenirs at shameless prices. Parties to visit the Triana of Seville or the Albaicin of Granada are great fun, but a terrible strain on the patience of the person who accepts the responsibility for his friends’ amusement.
If the Tango and its Flamenco kinsmen fail to conquer a permanent place in the Spanish repertoire, it will be through their exclusion from the respectable Spanish family. The daughter of the house does not learn dancing of the Gipsy type except in the unusual case that she is preparing for a dancer’s career. The Flamenco has picturesqueness and “salt,” but of dignity less. To the Spaniard, that which lacks dignity is vulgar, however witty or graceful. Witty or graceful things may be enjoyed, though dignity be lacking; but the doing of such things is another matter. The Gipsy’s untutored point of view on obscenity is a further argument against their admission into the home. It is not a structural part of any of the Flamenco work. But association has
created a sentiment, and against sentiment logic is helpless.