La Chunga
Who is La Chunga?
Micaela Flores Amaya, La Chunga, was born in Marseille in 1938 to Andalusian parents, and grew up in Barcelona from the age of one. She began dancing at six in the bars of Barcelona’s Somorrostro, and it was the painter Francisco Rebés who, upon discovering her talent, guided her first artistic steps and also introduced her to naïve painting, a discipline she would go on to pursue alongside her career as a bailaora.
Career
She made her debut at the Cabaret El Emporium in Barcelona, where she drew the attention of Catalan intellectuals, and in 1956 was hired by Pastora Imperio for her tablao in Palamós, an early endorsement from one of the great dance figures of the previous generation. She later performed at the Corral de la Morería in Madrid before making the leap to Hollywood, where she arrived on Ava Gardner’s recommendation; she worked on two American films, performed in Las Vegas and was one of the first Spanish artists to appear on color television programs in the United States.
She toured Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela, Argentina, Chile, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and Japan throughout the 1950s and 1960s, and won the Trofeo Laurel de Oro in Chile. In 1961 she presented the show “Chunga Carrusel” at the Price theater in Madrid; in 1965 she performed at a UNESCO festival in Brussels, and in 1971 she opened the tablao El Cordobés in Barcelona.
Style
Her dancing is marked by a highly personal originality, defined by her habit of dancing barefoot and by a plasticity and nerve in her postures that critics have described as a singular flamenco aesthetic, distinct from that of her contemporaries.
Legacy
As a naïve painter she has exhibited in galleries in Paris — including Maxim’s — and Madrid, with work influenced by Picasso and Dalí. Poets such as Blas de Otero and Rafael Alberti dedicated verses to her, and she has received various medals and awards from Spanish cultural institutions, confirming her as one of the flamenco bailaoras with the greatest international reach of her generation.