El Güito
Who is El Güito?
Eduardo Serrano Iglesias, El Güito, was born in 1942 in Madrid’s Rastro neighborhood, into a Roma family in which his mother made a living selling lottery tickets in bars and cafés. He began dancing as a child, and at five he won a competition for young talents at the Teatro Madrid, accompanied in that debut by guitarist Pepe Motos.
Career
He went on to train at the academies of La Quica and Antonio Marín, and at fourteen joined Pilar López’s company, one of the most demanding schools of Spanish dance of the era, where he crossed paths with Mario Maya. With Mario Maya and Carmen Mora he formed the Trío Madrid, a group with which he shared stages in the years that followed. At sixteen he won the Premio Sarah Bernhardt at the Théâtre des Nations in Paris, an early honor that confirmed his promise as a solo bailaor.
Style
His specialty was always the soleá, which he performed with a stage sobriety and asceticism that became his personal trademark: an economy of expressive means, centered composure and refined footwork, rather than ostentatious technical display. Critics have described him as a true paradigm of the classical ideal of flamenco dance.
Legacy
He received the Galardón Calle de Alcalá from the Festival de Madrid in 1996 and the Compás del Cante award from the Fundación Cruzcampo in 2015. He is still regarded as the great reference of the classical, masculine school of flamenco dance, direct heir to the rigor he learned alongside Pilar López and shared with contemporaries such as Mario Maya.