Luisillo
Who is Luisillo?
Luis Pérez Dávila, “Luisillo”, was born in 1928 in Mexico City, into a family with no dance tradition whatsoever. He studied classical ballet at an academy located in the very building where he lived, and by the age of fourteen he was already able to substitute for his own teacher, giving classes and staging opera divertimenti. Before committing to dance he even tried his luck as a boxer, but a decisive moment changed his course: seeing Carmen Amaya dance at the Teatro Fábregas.
Career
His big break came at the La Habana Madrid cabaret in New York, where Carmen Amaya herself discovered him and brought him into her company, beginning a four-year collaboration that shaped his artistic training. After leaving Amaya’s company he formed an artistic partnership with the dancer Teresa for five years, before creating his own group and founding a dance academy. His company toured stages all over the world, including China, Australia, South Africa and the Middle East, and even performed a work at the Vatican before Pope Paul VI.
His most singular contribution was to promote a narrative Spanish dance, with its own plot and dramaturgy, going beyond the simple stringing together of individual numbers; among his choreographies are “Luna de sangre”, “Llanto por un torero”, “La Malquerida”, “Amor brujo”, “Aventuras y desventuras de Don Quijote” (1982) and “La leyenda de Carmen Amaya” (1997), an explicit tribute to the woman who had launched him to fame. From 1976 and for more than forty years he directed the Teatro de Danza Española in Tres Cantos, Madrid, working alongside artists such as Lola Greco, Mayte Bajo and his own daughter, María Vivó, also a dancer.
Style
He is remembered for a highly refined and elegant classical training, capable of fusing ballet, flamenco, Spanish folklore and the escuela bolera into productions with theatrical structure and plot, something unusual in the Spanish dance of his time.
Legacy
He received distinctions such as the Ben Meritate prize (1964), the Gold Medal of La Fenice, and the Official Cross of the Order of Isabel la Católica, presented by King Juan Carlos I in January 1996. He died in Madrid on November 15, 2007.