Antonia Mercé, "LaArgentina". Ninotchka Bennahum

of the Spanish dance to his many students, most of whom came from Madrid’s wealthiest families.¹⁰ As premier danseur, Mercé also functioned in the capacity of teacher at the Music Conservatory, prepared both by his performance experience, as well as his stylistic knowledge of the form. His training of dancers was considered “rational and rigorous.”¹¹

      Mercé was a strict disciplinarian. He never veered from the traditional styles he had learned; he never extrapolated upon them and he was strict and demanding. Cordelier cites this conventionality on the part of Argentina’s father as one reason for her desire to break out of the traditional Spanish dance in order to express herself.¹²

      By 1880, Mercé had become the theater’s principal dancing master, or maestro de la escuela bolera.¹³ His title informs us that he specialized in the dances of the Spanish classical school: the boleros of Catalonia, peteneras of Andalusia, the jota (a dance closely associated with Aragón), Basque dances, and the western European ballet traditions of Jean-Georges Noverre (1727–1810), Jules Perrot (1810–92), and Enrico Cecchetti (1850–1928).¹⁴

      On tour at the Teatro Municipal in Córdoba, Spain, Mercé met Josefa Luque, “a pretty young Cordoban … who belonged to an old Andalusian family” that had lost all of its money.¹⁵ As she was very beautiful and of good family, she had received many marriage proposals, but turned them down, thinking that a poor woman had no right to marry a wealthy man.¹⁶ Mercé was not a rich man, nor was any dancer attached to a large European theater with a corps de ballet of roughly one hundred, as well as principal dancers on the payroll.¹⁷ It is curious, however, that an upper-class family would have allowed her to marry a dancer at all.¹⁸

      The Andalusian folk dance, sevillanas, and the boleros were often taught to young girls in late nineteenth-century Spain. Further, a girl from a good family would have been sent to dancing school, dance being considered an accomplishment for a young girl, and a good influence on a maturing adolescent. It seems only logical that Josefa had studied dance as a teenager and had returned to it later in life upon marrying Maestro Mercé. Although Argentina herself, in a 1936 interview with Elizabeth Borton, describes her mother as having begun dancing at a late age, the rigor of the jumps of the jota and the stamping footwork required by the peteneras would have made it impossible unless she had started as a girl. Argentina tells us that only a Spanish woman can “move as a Spanish woman … can walk in a Spanish way … portraying the mannerisms inherent within a Spaniard”¹⁹ Perhaps it was for this reason, that Argentina would have surmised her mother able to take to the stage without prior training at such a late age. In any case, if all young Spanish women learned boleros, perhaps the few from good homes became ballet dancers.²⁰ (Middle-class Andalusian girls and boys were taught the seguidillas sevillanas, a Sevillian folk dance of Moorish, Spanish, and Sephardic origin adapted by Gypsies and passed back to Andalusian Spaniards at fiestas and weeklong fairs.) They were not brought up to lead the existence of a dancer, touring at times without chaperones, able to earn their keep and make their own decisions.

      In Madrid, Josefa, a kind and loving woman according to her daughter, studied privately with her husband and, by the age of thirty-three, became primera bailerina at the Teatro Real. At times, she danced alongside her husband. At such an advanced age for a dancer, she would only have been considered for certain dances. Most likely, she would have been considered a bolera, or a Spanish “fancy-dancer.”

      Boleros required jumps, quick turns, and turns of the leg accompanied by a tightly held upper body carriage while playing the castanets. Even a determined dancer, such as Josefa Luque, however, could have attained no more than bolera status.²¹ She might also have danced peteneras, jotas, and valencianas, required dances at the Teatro Real in the late nineteenth century.²² Her ability to dance at all is questionable. Perhaps her family status was exaggerated by her daughter and she was sent to dancing school in order to learn a viable profession. Josefa Luque must, however, be seen as an ambitious, creative woman who loved the theater. Luis Montsalvatge described Josefa in relation to her husband: she was, “in contrast to [Manoël] … more sophisticated, with a kind of aristocratic intelligence…. [She] possessed the gift of grace to a lofty and resplendent degree.”²³

      In speaking about her parents’ extraordinary marriage and her mother’s ability to learn the art and craft of dancing at such a late age, Argentina speculated that it was her mother’s creativity and her father’s ability to teach—to break down a combination into a simple, comprehensible series of steps—that enabled her mother to become a principal dancer so late in life. (It was an almost impossible feat in any period of dance history as the essence of the dance is training the body to learn physically from an early age, giving oneself, through one’s body, an innate consciousness about space and time that is physically communicated between mind and body.)²⁴ But Argentina also attributed her mother’s ability to perform so late in life to her father’s authoritarian personality. She described him to Cordelier as a strict disciplinarian, while her mother was a more loving, emotional caregiver. It is no wonder that her career began after her father’s death.

      In 1892, the Mercés returned to Madrid, settling in a middle-class Salamanca neighborhood. They took up residence in a small house with a drawing room large enough for Mercé to continue giving his evening lessons. Her father’s private pupils frequented the Mercés’ living room late into the night for tutorials with the maestro. In this work-filled, artistic environment, the four-year-old Argentina was exposed on a daily basis to Spanish dance. Unhappy that she might become a dancer, Mercé insisted that she study music, an art cultivated by all aristocratic young girls.²⁵ Argentina was sent to the conservatory to learn music theory, general music history, singing, and castanets, all of which she detested.²⁶ Josefa “saw her daughter as a singer” and was determined that she go onstage as a “lyric artist” of some kind, even if she did not become an opera singer.²⁷ In the ultraconservative atmosphere of turn-of-the-century Madrid, singing was considered an acceptable profession for a young woman, if she were to have a profession at all. To be a dancer, however, wearing few clothes, dancing, perhaps, in a music hall or a singing café, was thought totally unacceptable by Victorian and Catholic standards, especially for a girl from a good family, even a dancing family such as the Mercés’.

      Cordelier’s biography contains a number of quotes from Argentina about her father’s surprised reaction to her youthful triumph in Córdoba. Argentina’s memory of her father’s prejudice against her dancing must be seen in its context. Speaking in hindsight, forty-four years after her debut, Argentina remembered her father as helpful by osmosis, never encouraging, except in the area of music. And musicianship was to launch Argentina to international stardom as the greatest castanet-player the world had ever known.

      Argentina’s father wanted her to become an excellent castanet-player, as well as a singer. For Señor Mercé, the castanets represented the soul of Spain, her history and culture. A delicate instrument that could accompany song and dance, they would provide the musical sensibility that would enable his daughter to understand rhythm. And for a maestro of the escuela bolera, the castanets were a symbol of an accomplished Spanish artist. They were, he felt, an upper-class pastime, reminiscent of Goya’s picturesque, pastoral scenes in which the nobility clicked their castanets as they passed one another in couple dances performed in immense ballrooms.

      In late nineteenth-century Madrid, castanets symbolized both aristocratic majas and majos, as well as poor, classless Gypsies. It is only necessary to look at the Gypsy drawings of Gustave Doré and John Singer Sargent, and the café cantante (singing café) paintings of Joaquín Sorolla and José Llovera, for evidence of the vast use of castanets by Andalusian Gypsy flamenco dancers.²⁸

      If played with attention and care, the castanets created a sonorous, almost airy sound. At the turn of the twentieth century, castanets were used by Gypsies and non-Gypsies as accompaniment to flamenco dance. After the Spanish civil war, castanets were no longer used to accompany flamenco, but were retained for escuela bolera. With Paco de Lucia’s jazz improvisations in the 1960s and 1970s and the death of Franco in 1975, castanets were once again seen on the hands