La Argentinita
Who is La Argentinita?
Encarnación López Júlvez, La Argentinita, was born in Buenos Aires in 1895, the daughter of Spanish parents who returned to Madrid when she was six. She began performing at private parties from the age of seven and, by around twelve, was already appearing as a child prodigy in Madrid variety halls. She trained at the academies of Manuel Fontanilla and Julia Castelao, on Calle Olivares in Madrid, and made her formal debut at eight at the Teatro Circo in San Sebastián.
Career
During the 1920s she performed on Madrid stages such as La Latina, the Príncipe Alfonso, the Comedia, the Princesa and the Apolo, and from 1929 took her art to Paris and Berlin. In 1932 she launched her own company with folkloric ballets such as “Las calles de Cádiz” and “El Café de Chinitas,” with artists such as La Macarrona, La Malena and Antonio de Triana, her artistic partner until 1941; afterward she danced alongside Federico Rey and, from 1942, alongside José Greco. She was a figure very close to the Generación del 27: she collaborated with Federico García Lorca, with whom she recorded, in 1931, an album of popular Spanish songs with the poet on piano, and also with Rafael Alberti and Salvador Dalí, the latter as designer for some of her productions.
Specializing in flamenco tangos and bulerías, as well as boleros and palillos dances, she kept expanding her repertoire with eighteenth-century songs and pieces by Lope de Vega alongside popular traditions from across Spain. She scored a resounding triumph in the United States, where she presented “El Café de Chinitas” at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1943, brought there by producers such as Sol Hurok.
Style
Her dancing sought a pure line, free of superfluous “twisting,” with an approach that was at once poetic and dramatic, placing technique at the service of emotion. Her sister was the dancer and choreographer Pilar López, with whom she shared that same sensibility for Spanish dance rooted in popular tradition.
Legacy
She gave her last performance on 28 May 1945 at the Metropolitan Opera House with Falla’s “Capricho español,” and died a few months later, on 24 September of that same year, in New York. She received posthumous honors such as the medals of Alfonso el Sabio and Isabel la Católica, and that New York theater still keeps a plaque in her memory.