A new dance

In 1916, Ballets Russes of Diaghilev, made their first tour in Spain that entailed a turning point for the incorporation of modernity and avant-garde to the world of dance in our country. The following year, Picasso did his first work as stage-designer for the company. His ballet Parade, collaborating with Massine, Satie and Cocteau, was premiered in Paris and was later on performed in Madrid and Barcelona.

The arrival of the Ballets Russes burst into a panorama in which academic dance was focused on the dancing bodies of Teatro Real and Liceo, where, with few exceptions, served as complement to opera productions. Concurrently, other theatrical stages and musical cafés hosted several forms of dancing, in a broad range of styles that included flamenco and other varieties. There, bailaoras like Pastora Imperio -protagonist of the world premiere of El amor brujo in 1915- and María de Albacín triumphed, as well as other classical dancers such as María Esparza and Teresina Boronat, or cabaret singers and performance artists like la Argentinita or Laura de Santelmo.

In this context emerged a type of modern dance, cheered by international referents like Loie Fullers, Isadora Duncan and Émile Jaques-Dalcroze. Dancers like Tórtola Valencia, Àurea de Sarrà and Charito Delhor offered pieces inspired by the Greco-Latin antiquity, orientalism and the imaginary of “lo español”. At the same time, the Russian model was imitated endlessly, and Diaghilevs’ Ballets Russes was followed by other foreign companies like Anna Pavlovas’, Swedish Ballets and Viennese Ballets. Beyond our frontiers “lo español” achieved a great international attention through modern proposes, like El sombrero de tres picos, premiered in London in 1919 by the Ballets Russes with the signatures of Falla, Massine and Picasso.