Carmen Amaya - Biography
Carmen Amaya is considered the best female flamenco dancer in history. Although she was also a talented singer, her dance moves, learned mostly on the street, made her an international superstar. The flamenco guitarist Sabicas befriended Amaya when they were both children, and their brief period of collaboration in the ’50s is still legendary in flamenco circles. Though she lived to be only 50-years-old, her style has left an indelible mark on flamenco dance.
Amaya was born in Barcelona in 1913. Her grandfather, Juan Amaya Jiménez, was a famous dancer and her father, El Chino, was a noted guitarist. Also of note, Amaya’s aunt, La Faraona, was a famous flamenco dancer in El Sacromonte, a gypsy neighborhood of Granada. By the time she was four years old, Amaya was already famous for her dancing. By the time she was 16 she was already dancing professionally, mesmerizing audiences in Madrid and Paris with her moves. She was nicknamed “La Capitana” and toured with Manuel Torre, La Niña and Manuel Vallejo, the latter a legendary guitarist.
She dressed in the traje corto, a tight-fitting man’s suit and her lightening-fast footwork was dazzling. It’s said that she had legs of steel, and she often put her foot through the stage while performing. One night in Madrid, Sabicas asked her to dance while he played, and the night of their first collaboration is considered a seminal moment in flamenco history. Amaya made her movie debut in 1935 in La hija de Juan Simón, a film co-directed by José Luis Sáenz de Heredia and Nemesio M. Sobrevila. Her performance after jumping into a tabletop in a cabaret is one of the film’s best moments.
When the Spanish Civil War started she left her native country and toured Lisbon, London, Paris, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Uruguay, Venezuela and New York. She settled in the United States in 1936, and would be invited to dance in the White House Presidents such as Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944, and for Harry Truman in 1953. In the late ’40s and early ’50s, Sabicus and Amaya toured the globe, amazing audiences with their mastery of flamenco styles. While Amaya also sang on these dates, it was her dancing that was the main attraction.
Amaya made several films while she was in the United States including Panama Hattie (1942) with Lena Horne, Follow the Boys (1944), the screen adatpation of Kurt Weill’s Broadway play Knickerbocker Holiday (1944), and Olsen and Johnson’s See My Lawyer (1945). Amaya returned to Spain in 1947 and continued performing until she died in 1963. Her last film was Francisco Rovira Beleta’s Los Tarantos (1963), a flamenco version of Romeo and Juliet that was an international smash.
Amaya’s dancing transcended her singing career, but she did make albums for several European and American labels, all of them long out of print. Reissues include Amaya and Sabicas (2005 EPM Musique France), which are performances culled from albums she made in the ’50s; Great Masters of Flamenco, Vol. 6 (1996 Chant du Monde), a collection of gypsy ballads; Carmen Amaya, Año 1948-50 (2009 DiscMedi SA), which are early recordings with her family; and La Reina Del Sacromonte (2001 Blue Moon).