MagnaCarla

Regarded as "the most accomplished Flamenco dancer of all time," Carmen Amaya was the first female to master the complex footwork typically reserved for top male dancers. This footage shows her dancing in 1944 when she was around 30 years old. Amaya was born into a poverty-stricken family in Barcelona in 1913. From the tender age of 4, she began to accompany her guitarist father at night, performing in pubs where they danced and sang to earn a living by gathering the coins that patrons would toss onto the floor. Progressively, she moved from pubs to performing in minor theaters. In 1929, her name was etched in print for the first time in a local newspaper when art critic Sebastià Gasch gave the following review: "Suddenly a jump! And the gypsy girl danced. Indescribable. Soul. Pure Soul. Feeling made flesh. The floorboards vibrated with unprecedented brutality and incredible precision. La Capitana was a gross product of Nature. Like all gypsies, She must have been born dancing. It was before school, before the academy. All that she knows, She must have known from birth. Promptly, the viewer feels subjugated, upset, dominated by the face of La Capitana, by her fierce hip movements, by the bravery of her pirouettes and the force of her broken turns, whose animal ardor ran parallel with the astonishing accuracy with which she executed them. The raging battery of her heels and the unsteady play of her arms now aroused, excited, then collapsing, surrendered, abandoned, dead, gently moved by the shoulders, are still recorded in our memories like indelible plaques. what caused us to look at her dance was her nerve, which twisted her in dramatic contortions, her blood, her violence, her wild impetuosity as a caste dancer."⁣ Her fame grew, and she soon found herself in the company of Hollywood celebrities. In 1941, she graced the stage at Carnegie Hall in New York and was invited to perform at the White House by Franklin D. Roosevelt. Amaya's life was tragically cut short due to kidney failure in 1963 at the age of 50.