America found its way here from Argentina. In the form it takes here, its relation to the Tango of Spain is little more than a coincidence of names. In none of the Spanish dances does the man’s arm ever go around the woman’s waist—the purely Spanish, that is. Off-shoots and corruptions to be found in the Latin Americas do not signify. The Spanish Tango is of the Flamenco group. It is a solo for a woman. By convention she performs it wearing a man’s hat, the manipulation of which gives some grotesquely graceful occupation to her hands. Apart from this it is distinguished from the others of the group mainly by the sequence in which steps are combined; in spirit, elemental steps and poses, it conforms to the type of its family.
El Garrotin is distinguished by the importance it gives the hands. They repel, warn, invite; half the time they are held behind the back. So indirect are their hinted communications, so alien are their movements to anything in the Occidental way of thinking, that they unite with the girl’s over-the-shoulder smile in an allurement no less than devilish.
Other dances of the same school are Marianas and Alegrias, long familiar. New ones introduce the names of las Moritas and Bulerias. Each has its personality, but all are composed of the Gipsy steps, performed in the sinuous manner, and rich with contrasts of fast and slow, soft and energetic movements. All are adorned with the stamping, sole-tapping, clapping and finger-snapping already described; though Marianas, as a quasi-Classic, may be performed with castanets. All moreover, are costumed alike, as indicated in the sketches and photographs, most of which in this chapter were made possible by the courtesy of Eduardo Cansino and his sister Elisa, of the family of one of the most capable masters in Spain. The man’s suit is the habitual street dress of the Andalusian torero. It may represent a retiring taste by being of grey or brown cloth. But if it belong to one of those typical Sevillanos who believe that a man is an important decorative feature of the landscape, it may be of velvet—blue, wine-colour, purple in any of its shades, or jet-black. With the little pendant coat-button ornaments of gilt, as they may be; the silk sash, rose or scarlet, just showing under the waistcoat; with the shirt ruffled, and the collar fastened with link buttons, as it ought to be; and the whole animated with the game-cock air that the torero assumes as befitting a public man, it is a costume not lacking in gallantry.
For the woman, convention has strained for a substitute for the inanely garish, shapeless garments of the Gipsy sister—a good note of colour they make on the hillside, but in all truth, a poor model for dressing when placed among formalised surroundings. The conclusion is a compromise shocking, on first impression, to the ideals of the Spanish dance. But, as though to confirm the argument of the futurist painters, that colour-harmony is a matter of what you are accustomed to, you grow into an acceptance of it. Many people even like it. It has indeed this merit, that it is a realisation of the Gipsy’s dream of elegance. Beginning with the manton—the long-fringed flowered shawl—half of these bailarinas of the Flamenco seem to patronise some special frenzied loom that supplies their class alone. The richness of design that you saw on the manton of the lady in the next box at last Sunday’s corrida you find replaced here in el teatro de variedades by an anarchy of colour, and poppies of the size of a man’s hat. The skirt is stiffened in the bell-shape surviving other days, and well adapted to composition with Spanish steps; but the colours are of the piercing brilliancy attainable only by spangles. Orange, carmine, emerald-green and cerulean-blue are the favourite palette from which the scheme is selected, with the unit of design of a size that makes more than two of them impossible on the same skirt. Nevertheless, one accepts it with custom, aided by the seduction of the dance—which has been known to secure for its performers pardon for transgressions graver, in some eyes, than crimes against colour.
Artists there are, of course, who use the colour and spangles with taste and style, just as there are those of high ability and seriousness who select the Flamenco on which to build reputation. For dignity, however, we turn sooner or later to the Classic.
In Andalusia, the first dance you will hear named is las Sevillanas—unless you happen to be in Seville, where the same dance is known as Seguidillas. The latter word lacks explicit significance. It applies to a form of verse, thence to analogous phrasing in musical composition, then to a structure of dance. In general it denotes a composition of three or more stanzas, or coplas, repeating the same music but changing the theme of the step. Various provinces and even vicinities have their special Seguidillas. The number of these and other dance-forms indigenous to Spain is uncounted, so far as we know; certainly any complete description of them individually would furnish material for many hundred pages of print, especially if the list should include the widely scattered derivatives. Mexico, Cuba, and various countries of South America have their local compositions; but of these many are mere degenerations of their original models, and many are compounded with steps of the Indians. Since none has contributed anything of consequence, this chapter’s necessary concentration on the work of Spain itself involves little real sacrifice.
