Fanny Ellsler electrified the America of our fathers’ boyhood days with her interpretation of la Cachucha. Zorn’s Grammar presents a choro-stenographic record of it, showing few elements that do not occur in Sevillanas. La Cachucha itself has disappeared from the Peninsula—practically at least, if not absolutely. Its existence is in printed records and a few old people’s memories. The inference is that it was at a high pitch of popularity at the time of Ellsler’s sojourn in Spain, and that Sevillanas subsequently absorbed it. Showing the operation of an old process: “Our buildings and our weapons of war are renewed from day to day.... Chairs, cupboards, tables, lamps, candlesticks are also changed. It is the same with our games and dances, our music and songs. The Zarabanda has gone; Seguidillas are in fashion; which, in their turn, will disappear to make room for newer dances.” So wrote Mateo Aleman, in the sixteenth century. He might a little more exactly have said “reappear in” instead of “disappear to make room for.”
Sevillanas, as was said before, is Seville’s special arrangement of Seguidillas. Valencianas and Aragonesas are among the modifying geographic words also in use; Vuillier quotes also Gitanas, Mollaras, Gallegas and Quipuzcoanas. These terms as localising modifications of Seguidillas may be no longer current. But their existence is significant, as indicating a parent trunk from which many local dance forms have branched. It seems pretty safe to infer that acquaintance with the general characteristics of the Seguidillas type gives us an idea of the essentials of some of the dances of very early times, by whatever names they may have been known. Like Sevillanas and la Cachucha, el Fandango (which as a name has retired into the mountains of the North, and otherwise is preserved in the opera La Nozze de Figaro) is recorded as being a species of Seguidillas. The castanets are a link that binds the family, logically or otherwise, to earliest history.
The Fandango, though restrained in the theatre, seems at all times to have been danced in less formal gathering places in a manner more or less worldly. A story pertaining to it was written in the seventeenth century. The Pope (according to the story) heard that the Fandango was scandalous, and as a means of stopping its practice, proposed excommunication as a penalty for its performance. A consistory was debating the issue, when a cardinal proposed that the accused was entitled to an opportunity to defend itself. This seemed reasonable, and the dancers were summoned.
“Their grace and vivacity,” says Davillier, “soon drove the frowns from the brows of the Fathers, whose souls were stirred by lively emotion and a strange pleasure. One by one their Eminences began to beat time with hands and feet, till suddenly their hall became a ballroom; they sprang up, dancing the steps, imitating the gestures of the dancers. After this trial, the Fandango was fully pardoned and restored to honour.”
Whatever the lack of basis for the tale, it is a fact that the Church in Spain has recognised the dance as an art that, like music, lends itself to religious ritual. Seville Cathedral still has occasions for the solemn dance of los Seises. In 1762, dancers were taken from Valencia to help celebrate the laying of the foundation-stone of Lerida Cathedral. Instances might be multiplied at length.
The costume most picturesque and romantic that woman has at her disposal for these dances is that of the madroñero—the network dotted with little black balls, draped over the hips. Imagine the bodice black velvet, and the skirt golden-yellow satin, and you have a spot-and-colour translation of Andalusia. But the dress of the madroñero is not often to be seen; the spangled Flamenco costume is publicly accepted as the dress of a Spanish dancing girl.
The manton should be draped over the shoulders like a shawl in la Jota Aragonesa and other dances indigenous to central and northern provinces. It is Flamenco to fold it diagonally to form a triangle, and wrap it around the body in such a way that the depth of the triangle lies on the front of the body; the apex points downward, and is arranged to fall to one side of the centre. The other two ends are crossed over the back and brought forward over the shoulders; or one end may be tucked in, and the more made of the end that remains in sight.
The dance in which we see the white mantilla to which the Spanish girl owes a portion of her fame is la Malagueña y el Torero. Perhaps owing to the weight of the man’s costume proper to the dance, it is not often performed; for the bullion-adorned dress of the torero is of a weight suggestive of anything but airy foot-work.
The characters of the piece—it is one of the very few Spanish mimetic dances—are represented, as might be expected, in a little flirtation. Of the three movements, the first is an animated paseo, or promenade, the torero wrapped in the capa de gala prescribed by ceremony as essential for matadores and banderilleros during their entrance parade into the bull-ring. The torero is followed by the girl, her face demure in the half-shade of the overhanging mantilla. A manton carried folded over her arm, suggestive of a torero’s cape, gives to the pantomime the key of fantasy; and her weapon of coquetry is a fan.