"La Argentinita" - 19 & 24 June 1937

Film footage of La Argentinita including original programme documents held in the Archive of the Alexandra Palace Television Society. This is a RE-POSTING to include programme documents along with an original audio recording of music La Argentinita danced to.

La Argentinita is the stage name of a famous dancer born Encarnación López Julvez (3 March 1898 - 24 September 1945) in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Among her performances was as the Butterfly in the premiere of Federico García Lorca's El maleficio de la mariposa. She partnered with Frederico Rey who, as Freddy Wittop, later enjoyed a successful and award-winning career as a theatrical costume designer.

La Argentinita was a variety show star, although the popular flamenco and Andalusian styles were preponderant in her dancing. She trained in several dance schools and started very young, so much so that she was presented as a child prodigy in high society parties, in the theatres and halls staging variety shows of the greatest renown, and in tours that she undertook around Spain and America. She even managed to supersede other artists who were more firmly established, like Raquel Meller, with her cunning and special grace, although her voice wasn't quite as exceptional as theirs. She was more outstanding as a dancer than as a singer.

La Argentinita belongs to what may be termed the "Generation of 27" in dancing, which managed to renew the Spanish artistic and theatre scenes, in the same way as others did in the fields of humanities or plastic arts (i.e. sculpture and modeling). La Argentinita was artistically related to them, especially to García Lorca, Alberti and the bullfighter Sánchez Mejías, with whom she also had a love story. In 1931 she sang and recorded some popular folk songs that had been collected by García Lorca. Sánchez Mejías wrote "Las Calles de Cádiz" for her; Dalí designed the decoration and Lorca composed the verses for "El Café de Chinitas".

She also had some important successes during her years in exile as a result of the Spanish Civil War, years that she spent in New York (1938-1945), the city where an important number of Spanish artists and intellectuals gathered. There, she became one of the great figures in international dancing.

Transmitted: 19th & 24th June 1937 - 3pm - 3.10pm

This film footage is from the Desmond Campbell Archive Collection held and administered by the Alexandra Palace Television Society.

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Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• apts
• alexandra
• palace
• television
• society
• simon
• vaughan
• la
• argentinita
• spanish
• dancing
• bbc
• service
• june
• 1937

[VictorSturgeon]

La Argentinita taught my grandmother how to dance flamenco- she was a great teacher but long before Joaquin Cortés claimed to have brought Classical ballet and flamenco together she did.

[aptsarchive]

@VictorSturgeon Thank you for your comment and what a fascinating connection you have to La Argentinita. From my research I get the feeling that she was extremely well respected in her specialised area of dance.

[aptsarchive]

Thank you for your comments and glad you enjoyed watching.

[fivnten]

Fascinating! Thank you!