La Singla (Antonia Singla)
This award-winning detective story relates how, step-by-step, journalist, Elena'S (Helena Kaittani), meticulous research of old archives, newspaper cuttings and interviews with contemporaries, tried to find the truth behind the elusive disappearance of Flamenco dancer ‘La Singla’ (Antonia Singla).
La Singla wowed audiences all over Europe during the late 1960s and 70s. becoming massively famous outside of her own country but no prophet in her own, except in a fairly small circle. Then, suddenly, she disappeared, without trace. Was she alive, was she dead? The intrigue eventually melted away and Elena found, to her amazement, that quite well- known Flamenco dancers had not even heard of her.
Elena finds herself fascinated by the moving story of this girl, who had lost her hearing shortly after birth due to meningitis. Fifty years later she decided to uncover the true story behind her success and the reasons for her disappearance from the public domain and the Flamenco stages of Europe. She was driven by an unfailing belief that this girl merited more than to be merely forgotten in the mists of time.
La singla was born in 1948, in Somorrostro de la Barceloneta, a shanty town, largely populated by the Romani community. With her striking features, her wild, long hair and feral look, she wandered about the shanty town, mesmerizing her family and neighbours with her extraordinarily haunting and piercing eyes, and the profoundly primal sensuality of her dancing., for she was almost dancing as soon as she was walking. Despite being bullied by the local kids, she made her mark all the same, thanks to her enormous talent. She was still very young, when her father abandoned her mother Rosa, and La Singla’s numerous siblings, leaving them even more destitute.
Somorrostro was part of a large area of shacks that stretched from Barceloneta to the Besos River. It was perched precariously on the beach between the railway line and the waves. Without electricity or running water, the Romani families within, nevertheless, developed a strong sense of community, surviving the frequent, dangerous flooding by encroaching waves, until it was finally raised to the ground by a new mayor in the 1980s in one week. Today, it is all bars and fancy restaurants and a large beach for tourists.
La Singla started out communicating with herself in a mirror, then dancing to herself, copying the gestures of Flamenco that she saw in the bars-, Encouraged by her mother, by the time she was 11 and 12, she was dancing in those bars, feeling the vibrations of the beat, and counting as she watched the guitarist playing and her mother’s clapping to the rhythms. Picking up the more percussive elements of Flamenco, she became famous for her stunning footwork and the powerful emotions conveyed by her dancing. As if she ’wanted to banish something terrible from within her being’.
To further understand La Singla, Elena interviewed another deaf dancer, María Angeles who reminds her that there are no deaf mutes, only deaf people. For they communicate in many ways, by sign, voice or movement and there are methods to teach a deaf person to train the mind to ‘hear’ sounds in other ways.
La Singla came to the fore when she performed as a teenager, in a movie by Francisco Rovira Beleta, ‘LOS TARANTOS’. A Romeo and Juliet story about the confrontation of two Roma families, Los Tarantos and the Zorongos. It featured La Singla dancing and all the actors were non-professionals picked from the very shanty town where it was staged. There, La Singla was spotted by well-known Flamenco dancer Carmen Amaya, who herself had emerged from a similar background.
A group formed around La Singla, part friends, part family, partly to protect her, including one Francisco J Banegas, who set himself up to represent her. He organized tours and opportunities for her talent. Fortunately, in that same group was a photographer known as Colita (pen name for Isabel Steva Hernández). She documented those early years of La Singla’s and created a memorable archive of extraordinary images of La Singla, dancing in the many bars and small venues of the area. Banegas got her to dance with other famous Flamenco musicians, so she worked with Paco de Lucia, Camarón, Vicente Escudero, El Faraón and shared venues with greats, like Antonio Gades and Lola Flores.
Elena played by Helena Kaittani dances with her deaf teacher
Elena, the journalist, decides to learn to dance as well and works with Maria Angeles, the deaf dancer, to better understand La Singla. She began to see that her passion went further than the dance, there was the enigma of her stare and the power of her moves. Two German Jazz musicians, deeply impressed, arranged for her to dance at festivals and she became internationally famous. This led to her being befriended by many, including Dalí, his wife Gaia and even Marcel Duchamp.
The whole situation changed radically and turned a lot darker, when her father hearing of her success in 1966, decides to abandon his French second family (and 10 children) in Perpignan and return to live with Rosa, so he could control La Singla (and the profits her dancing generated). He ruptured the small group around her and separated her from all her friends.
Helena Kaittani ( Elena) and Colita the photographer
Her silent work became more silent as despite being invited to work in Hollywood and being inundated with offers of work, La Singla dropped out of sight. She wrote a legal and final (cordial) letter to Banegas that she will no longer work with him. After that, there was no more news of any kind. She simply disappeared.
Elena, refused to give up and delved even deeper in her attempts to solve the mystery, and to everyone’s amazement, including her own, she succeeded.
Paloma Zapata
This is an exciting story of an extraordinary woman who had a lost childhood to silence, lived in dire poverty and abuse, and yet rose above it with her extraordinary talent for dance. Paloma Zapata has related it with empathy and passion, including the dark ambiguous cloud that hangs over her relationship with her father. The film might be too long, but would we really like to miss those mesmerizing videos of La Singla dancing her heart out? Never!
La Singla (2023)
Writer/Director Paloma Zapata / Production Nadja Smith, Paola Sáinz de Baranda, Paloma Zapata/ DOP Iñaki Gorraiz and Dani Mauri/ Music Juliana Heinemann/ Sound Design Hannes Schulze
CAST: Helena Kaittani. Maria Alfonsa Rosso, Adelfa Calvo, Antonio Singla.
