Sketch for the scenography of La romería de los cornudos by Alberto Sánchez. 1933. Waterbone paint on paper, 51,5 x 70 cm. Private collection.
The Company of Spanish Dance characterised for El amor brujo, 1933. From left to right, Rafael Ortega, la Malena, Encarnación López (la Argentinita), Pilar López, la Macarrona and Antonio Triana. Photography by Martín Santos Yubero. Regional Archive of the Comunidad de Madrid. Photographic fund “Martín Santos Yubero”.
Miniatures for Clavileño by Maruja Mallo, 1936.
Ever since its beginning, institutionism [related to the Institución Libre de Enseñanza, ILE] was pioneer in recognizing the value of popular arts. The study of folklore took a primary place in the ILE and its circles. The Junta para Ampliación de Estudios (JAE) promoted different scientific investigations aiming to document the diversity of popular music and dance. That was one of the objectives of the Archivo de la Palabra and the Canciones Populares, field studies initiated by Eduardo Martínez Torner and Jesús Bal y Gay after its constitution in 1919 by Tomás Navarro Tomás. A two way road that crystallized in the Coro y Teatro del Pueblo de Misiones Pedagógicas and in the works of La Barraca. With similar interests, most part of interprets included in their programs folkloric numbers, while several company projects were born.
The Residencia de Estudiantes and its feminine group, the Residencia de Señoritas, hosted activities linked to both cultural and popular music and dance in the new pedagogy. Their collaboration with the Instituto Internacional was a privileged source of contact with modern tendencies through the teaching of foreign teachers in rhythmic dance, physical education or Swedish gymnastics. Among the groups of residents, Spanish dance got a big reception. It is worth highlighting the collaboration between Federico García Lorca and Encarnación López, la Argentinita, who, with the participation of Ignacio Sánchez Mejías and other intellectuals and artists of the generation of 1927, founded the Spanish Dances Company in 1933, whose version of El amor brujo was performed at the Residencia.
In 1934, Maruja Mallo –who was granted a scholarship by the JAE to study scenography in Paris and shortly after would become a professor in the Residencia- and Rodolfo Halffter started working in the ballet Clavileño, which premiere, planned to be held in the Auditórium of the Residencia, was cut short by the outburst of the civil war. This way, in the Residencia, from Terpsícore –Greek muse of dancing-, history and tradition would serve as the basis of modern creation, as if those words of Isadora Duncan were paraphrased: “the dance of the future is the dance of the past”. A future faded for many people with the events that were to come.
