A frail old woman sits alone on a chair on a darkened stage. There are flowers in her hair. She closes her eyes and the small, wrinkled hands begin to clap. The rhythm seems simple at first but her feet take up the beat, deconstructing it, multiplying it, embroidering it into fresh miracles of speed and precision. The packed house holds its breath until the rattling feet gradually dwindle to the gentlest percussive purr then stamp to a halt.
A fresh explosion of sound — from the other side of the footlights this time — as Sadler’s Wells rises to its feet to welcome back La Chana (‘the wise one’), queen of flamenco, after an absence of 30 years.
The smiling woman I meet the next morning is neither as old (a mere 71) nor as grand as her stage persona suggests. She arrives with her modest entourage — assistant, manager, second husband — and accepts my posy of camellias with a fragrant hug. She will wear them in her hair on stage tonight, she says, taking a seat at the head of the table and we begin a conversation that is part interview, part masterclass.
Antonia Santiago Amador never had a dancing lesson, but one day at a family wedding in Barcelona her maternal uncle, the guitarist ‘El Chano’, began playing seguidillas and she took to the floor, astonishing him with her technique.
‘Who taught you that?’
‘The radio.’
Young Antonia would hear a flamenco rhythm (compas) on the family wireless then sneak away to practise, hammering out steps on a tiny makeshift dance floor of old roof tiles. Her strict Gypsy father initially refused to let her perform in public — ‘dancers were bad women’ — but her uncle promised to keep a close eye on her and at 14 she made her professional debut.
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