Flying Frills: When Flamenco is All About Gestures, Machines, and Nymphs

Resumen

This paper re-evaluates the modernist significance of flamenco by focusing on Antonia Mercé, La Argentina, as a foundational yet overlooked figure in avant-garde dance. As well, it claims a common pattern of artistic and choreatic practices between Mercé and Isadora Duncan within avant-garde art and dances. Through the lens of Aby Warburg's Mnemosyne Atlas and critical theories from Agamben, Foucault, and Deleuze, it demonstrates how Mercé’s choreography embodies the lost gestures of Western modernity.

It is necessary to clarify, on the one hand, that there were different levels of impact and common influences between the avant-garde art and both dancers. On the other hand, the bidirectional transfer that went on amidst modern dance, and philosophy and feminism thought, which emerged in the West at the beginning of the 20th century with a liberating germ. In this context, the article argues that flamenco's marginalization in dance historiography stems from entrenched narratives that oppose folkloric expression to modernist innovation. By revisiting visual, historical, and philosophical sources, this study reclaims flamenco as a crucial mode of cultural and feminist resistance in the early 20th century.