Dance in the Blood.

The children of Jose Greco, now touring the U.S. and Canada as the Spanish Dance Company, demonstrate the power--and problems--of dynastic artistry.

Jose Greco II, son of the great Spanish dancer and Lola de Ronda, has vivid memories of his famous father's unsuccessful attempt to create dances for him and his two sisters, Carmela and Lola, when the three first appeared on tour with their father in the United States in 1988. "It was like taking three big diamonds and trying to squeeze them in his hand," says the younger Greco. "But diamonds can be hard to manage. They can become nitroglycerine and explode in your face." The explosive metaphor may reflect the fact that Jose Greco, despite his completely convincing embodiment of Gypsy, or gitano, style onstage, was born in Brookyln of Sicilian parents. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s his touring company brought Spanish dance to almost every American town of over 50,000; and he reached a broader audience in such films as Ship of Fools and Around the World in 80 Days.

The Greco siblings are together again this season--without Jose senior--for a six-week tour of America and Canada with the Spanish Dance Company. Members include Jose II; his wife, U.S. flamenco dancer Cristina Godinez; his sister Carmela; and his younger sister, Lola Greco, a ballerina who sometimes appears as a guest artist. The company's guitarist and musical director is Antonio Gabarri, and the singer--cantador--is Gabarri's brother Alfonso. Repertory is not limited to flamenco, but includes scores by classical Spanish composers Albeniz and Turina. This, according to Jose II, gives the audience a break from the stamp-stamp-stamp rhythms of flamenco, and exposes the audience to the broader world of Spanish dance.

"Being a dancer is in the blood," Jose II commented. "A school can teach technique, but dancers are born." Carmela and Jose were products of boarding, schools, while younger sister Lola entered the National Ballet of Spain school at age fourteen, under the tutelage of then-director Antonio Gades. Jose's dance education also began at the company school, but the formal period lasted only a year and a half. Subsequently he came up through the hard-knocks school of tablaos, clubs where flamenco artists perform. These performances sometimes begin at midnight and last until four in the morning. Many are improvisational, and dancers compete with each other to see who can outdo the other. "This was the school I survived," says Jose, "and to survive I had to learn." He spent seven years in the tablaos, touring Japan, Spain, and other parts of Europe.

Carmela had introduced him to working in the tablaos. She had thrust herself into flamenco at age fifteen, getting up onstage in the clubs and improvising. By age twenty-three she had her own small company, Ballet Estampas, which toured Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Whenever her company arrived at a new venue, the club owners would ask to speak to the company director. "When I told them that I was the director," says Carmela, "and they saw this young girl, they would be shocked, and they would say, `Oh my God, what have we got into?'"

Jose II, Carmela, and Lola became dancers without the encouragement or assistance of their parents. Theirs was not a showbiz family, with the mother and father pressuring their children to study dance. Jose Sr. and Lola knew the perils of the artist's life, and they never intended any of their children to follow in their footsteps. They were divorced when the three siblings were still children. Carmela and Jose II stayed with their mother, while Lola lived with both Jose Sr. and de Ronda. The three young Grecos happened on the dance profession by themselves.

Jose Sr. first saw Carmela and Jose II perform in 1985 in a Madrid nightclub. He had had barely any contact with them for a number of years. Although he knew of Lola's career, he was surprised by their performance. "I never taught a step to any of them," he says. "I never dreamed that I would have such talented children."

He offered to take the three of them on tour with him to the U.S., but they declined. For many years, they had only seen their father one day a year. He was almost a stranger to them, and his offer at first overwhelmed them. They were not yet prepared to perform under his wing.

Fences were mended in 1988 when Jose II, Carmela, and Lola accepted their father's invitation for a U.S. tour which began at the Joyce Theater in New York City. This was the first time that the three siblings had worked together. Billed as "The Next Generation," the tour was not a complete critical success, although it did sell out the Joyce for the length of the run. The first tour ended unhappily, in part because it included a residency in Iowa, where the younger Grecos were fish out of water. There were also artistic differences between father and son. Carmela says, "It is characteristic of two males in a family to compete. Lola and I never challenged our father's decisions. My father is very liberal with us in all matters, but onstage he is a dictator."

Lola toured with Jose Sr. for a year and with Carmela for two. Lola then returned to the National Ballet of Spain, while Carmela became a teacher of dance and choreography at Madrid's Amor de Dios, the world's most famous flamenco school. Jose remained with his father's company until 1994, when he began his own company, Jose Greco II Flamenco Dance Company. He married Godinez, and they live with their two-year-old daughter in Cristina's hometown, Laredo, Texas, where he has a studio.

As for Lola, she was the star of the National Ballet of Spain until February 1998, when her contract was not renewed after the company's U.S. tour. She had been with the company for eighteen years and had been a prima ballerina since the age of nineteen. She danced leading roles in Medea, El Amor Brujo, La Casa de Bernarda Alba, Los Tarantos, and many other works--ballets that defined the company for the world. Her subtle projection of emotion and balletic line were mesmerizing. In what appears to be a major artistic shift under a new management, four other key company members were also dismissed at the same time. The new artistic director, Aida Gomez, formerly a soloist with Joaquin Cortes's company, is considered a contemporary artist, while Lola was classically trained.

When I spoke with Lola this winter, she was in the middle of a court trial, an uphill legal battle to be reinstated by the National Ballet. She had been working in Athens, rehearsing Vasilios Calitsis's World Mysteries. She had flown back to Madrid for a one-day court hearing. In person, she is an innocent, a spiritual waif, not unlike Herman Melville's Billy Budd. Her sister Carmela described her by saying, "as a dancer she is very aggressive, but not in life."

Despite the ongoing court proceedings, she was enthusiastic about her work with Calitsis. She displayed the tenacity of her family, not allowing herself to be embittered by a turn of bad luck.

She is wary about giving interviews, however, after speculating to a reporter during the National Ballet's U.S. tour about her contract not being renewed. It wasn't, and she did not speak to the press again for months. She still had hopes of being reinstated, and she feared that if she gave another interview she would further antagonize the company's management. However, the only result of her silence was that potential employers presumed that she was still under contract to the National Ballet. "I didn't work for six months!" she said. "I cried every day."

Carmela comments on the situation: "Lola is one of the best of Spain, but now she will no longer be able to work in this country." This impasse should be seen as another chapter in the tempestuous life of a Greco, and not the end of a career. Lola comes from a family with dance in its blood. She will continue to perform.

Neil Okrent is a Los Angeles-based freelance journalist and photographer who specializes in reporting on Latin dance.