Antonio Gades (1936-2004).

Dancer choreographer Antonio Gades brought an intense, seductive glamour to flamenco's powerful vocabulary. Turning to sources that tapped an enduring Gypsy mystique--Federico Garcia Lorca's Bodas de Sangre (Blood Wedding), Bizet's Carmen, and de Falla's haunting El Amor Brujo--he took flamenco's stylized movements and recast them in dramatic narrative terms.

One of the finest flamenco performers of the 20th century, Gades created a sensation performing at the 1964 World's Fair in New York City. Concentrating his performance on spare gestures, tight matador-pirouettes, and powerful footwork, he exuded masculinity. Yet despite his devotion to the flamenco form, he was neither a Gypsy nor Andalusian. Born in Elda, he grew up in Madrid and was sent to a dance academy where he studied flamenco, bolero, and folk dance. In a nightclub in the 1950s, Gades was discovered by Pilaf Lopez and Vicente Escudero, from whom he learned the masculine ecole de danse, and began to earn acclaim for his performances.

Over time, Gades became interested in expanding the flamenco form, staging Lorca's Blood Wedding as a stylized flamenco ballet set in a dance studio. Filmed by celebrated Spanish director Carlos Saura, the highly acclaimed result, which had the look and feel of a documentary, became an international hit.

Critic Pierre Lartigue claimed that Gades' flamenco was "duende-less," in line with a new, postfascist Spain and rid of the (sometimes forced) mysterious romanticism of southern Spanish flamenco. Blood Wedding featured Cristina Hoyos, a tall, compelling dancer who moved with regal authority. She and a talented ensemble of dancers, including Juan Antonio and Enrique Esteve, became the nucleus of Gades' new company. With them, Gades was inspired to make his most famous piece, Carmen, rethought as a flamenco-driven play-within-a-play, with flamenco music and dancing. It too was filmed by Saura.

"Gades brought flamenco to a new level with his movies with Saura and that was a great contribution--maybe his greatest as an artist," says master flamenco teacher and performer Teodoro Morca. Had he not died on July 22 of cancer, he and Saura would have reunited this past fall for a second, multimedia version of Carmen, an open-air production in the city of Carmen's birth: Seville.

Ninotchka Bennahum is a dance historian, author, and the Director of the MFA, in New Media Performance at Long Island University.