Antonio Gades, 67; Flamenco Dancer Widely Considered the Best of His Era

Antonio Gades, the soulful, hawk-faced flamenco dancer-choreographer considered by many to be the greatest Spanish dancer of his time, died Tuesday in Madrid. He was 67.

Gades died in Madrid’s Gregorio Maranon Hospital after a long battle with cancer, according to Spain’s EFE news agency.

“He was a great artist, unique. It’s a tremendous loss for dance,” said Jose Antonio Ruiz, director of the National Ballet of Spain.

Gades became the company’s first artistic director when the Spanish Ministry of Culture launched the troupe in 1978.

He also reached a wide audience through his 10 films, especially three made with Spanish director Carlos Saura. Those were “Blood Wedding” (1981), based on Federico Garcia Lorca’s play; “Carmen” (1983), which parallels the plot of Bizet’s opera with a backstage love story; and “El Amor Brujo” (Love, the Magician) (1986), which re-creates Manuel de Falla’s ballet about a woman possessed by the spirit of her dead husband.

Many regard “Blood Wedding” as the finest dance film ever made. “Carmen” was nominated for an Oscar for best foreign film.

Gades felt stifled by the camera, however.

“In the theater, you dance libre -- free,” he told The Times in 1984. “But the camera won’t allow that. For technical reasons, you have to follow certain rules when dancing for the camera. You must be very precise. You cannot have two people doing the same movement at the same time. On a stage, the audience can see them clearly, but the camera can’t.”

Gades was born Antonio Esteve Rodenas on Nov. 14, 1936, in Elda, near the Mediterranean city of Valencia. He was the first of two sons who both became dancers; his younger brother, Enrique, performed under the surname Esteve.

Gades left school at age 11 to work.

“This was normal for poor families at that time,” he told the Independent of London last year. “Children had to bring money in as soon as possible, like they have to in India now.”

He tried various jobs and at 12 began dancing in the streets “because I wanted to come close to the girls.”

Shortly thereafter, he was taken to a dancing school where he was discovered by the great flamenco dancer Pilar Lopez, who soon invited the teenager to join her company.

In only one season, Lopez promoted him to the rank of a principal dancer and for nine years he shared some of the world’s leading stages with her.

He gained further experience as assistant to ballet great Anton Dolin at the Rome Opera and as ballet master in the Spanish wing of the La Scala Opera in Milan.

In 1963, he formed his own company, which continued to perform -- with some gaps -- until his last illness. It started with six dancers and ended with 42.

Gades’ dancing at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York electrified American audiences. New York Herald Tribune dance critic Walter Terry called him “the blazing dance star of the Pavilion of Spain.”

A return engagement in 1972 confirmed his stature. New York Times critic Clive Barnes called him “the reigning king of Spanish dance.”

Washington Post critic Alan M. Kriegsman wrote -- after a performance that same season at the National Theater in Washington -- that Gades’ dancing “makes one conscious of the incandescent peaks to which life and art can rise in the searing fire of genius.”

Politics was another of Gades’ passions. A longtime communist, Gades left Spain in 1975 to protest the shooting of five anti-Franco agitators. He spent four years in Cuba. Fidel Castro was best man at his wedding.

“If they tried to invade [Cuba],” he told the London Guardian in 1996, “I would leave the theater now and defend the revolution.”

Last month, Castro awarded him the Order of Jose Marti, the highest honor bestowed by the Cuban government. Gades had earlier received an honorary doctorate from Cuba’s Higher Institute of Art and Havana’s Theater Award.

Gades is survived by his wife, Eugenia Eiriz; and three daughters. The funeral will be private.