Carmen Tórtola Valencia from Spain was a pioneer of avant-garde dance and feminism in the early twentieth century. When she was three years old her family moved to London, where they later left her, for reasons that are unknown, in the care of a wealthy British Family. Better educated than most women of the time, she learned several foreign languages and read extensively. Although she never forgot her native tongue, she always spoke Spanish with a foreign accent. Tórtola had been influenced by Isadora Duncan. Like the North American dancer, she took the Greek ideals of beauty and the passion of Greek tragedy as inspiration for her innovative use of movement and mime. Her interests soon extended to the study of other cultures and their dance forms. Carmen was particularly fascinated by the African, Arab and Indian cultures, which she studied intensely and then reinterpreted in her own expressive art form. Her independence, both in her art and her life was often perceived as a menace to the stability of traditional society. Tórtola had been a pioneer along with her contemporaries, Isadora Duncan, Virginia Woolf and Sarah Bernhardt in advancing womens liberation. She made many unorthodox choices: she became a vegetarian, a buddhist and advocated the abolition of the corset which constricted womens bodies and impeded their freedom of movement. Although she was known to have taken lovers from among the intellectuals of her time she chose to remain single and lived many years of her life with another women, Angeles Magret Vilá.
Posted on: Tue, 11 Nov 2014 20:17:57 +0000
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