José Greco (1918 - 2000)
by Elizabeth Hollenbeck
With an intense stage presence to match the
driving rhythms that characterize flamenco
dancing, José Greco captivated audiences
around the world during his career and brought
Spanish dance into mainstream culture. The
José Greco Dance Company was the first
Spanish dance troupe to perform on Broadway,
and among Greco’s other accomplishments are
numerous film and television appearances, and
the honor of receiving knighthood from the
Spanish government in 1962.
Since he is acknowledged as one of the premier
Spanish dancers in history, it may come as
something of a surprise to learn that José Greco
was actually born in the small mountain town of
Montorio Nei Frentani in Italy. His birth name
was Costanzo Greco, and once his father had
immigrated to the United States and attained
his citizenship - and that of his wife and children
by extension - he sent for the rest of their
family to come to New York where they settled
together in Brooklyn. Greco was nine years old
then, and by the time he was thirteen it had
become his duty to escort his sister Norina to
her Spanish dance classes at Madame Helen
Veola’s studio. At the time, Madame Veola was
the most renowned teacher of Spanish dance in
New York. She spent her summers in Spain
taking in the dance scene and then brought
back what she had learned to her studio classes.
Greco only watched at first, taking everything in
during class and at the weekly Tuesday night
recitals put on by the most accomplished
students. Norina would practice at their home,
occasionally struggling with combinations of
steps, and Greco would tease her by mimicking
what he’d seen in class perfectly. This teasing
rebounded on him when Norina told Madame
Veola that he pestered her at home saying he
was a better dancer than she was. Madame
Veola requested that Greco give a
demonstration. He was taken off guard by this,
but was loathe to back down, and so he
performed for the entire class - and received
thundering applause when he finished. Just like
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that, Greco ended up studying with Madame
Veola for several years, and was selected for an
opportunity to perform a number in La Traviata
at the Hippodrome Theatre in Manhattan at age
sixteen. The experience of performing onstage
in the largest and most successful theatre of
that era kindled Greco’s desire to study Spanish
dance even more seriously.
Greco began his career dancing in nightclubs,
sometimes venturing outside of New York,
although he maintained his connection to
Madame Veola’s studio. In 1938 he performed
with several of her students when a
distinguished guest was visiting the studio.
Madame Veola’s guest turned out to be the
well-admired dancer Vicente Escudero, who
was impressed with the young Greco. No one
could have predicted that this encounter would
lead to a telephone call, months later, from
none other than La Argentinita (given name:
Encarnación Lopez, 1900-1945), one of the
most talented and well-known Spanish dancers
at that time, who by then had heard about a
young dancer named Greco, and had decided to
offer him the chance to audition to be her
dance partner. He did, and passed with flying
colors, except for one small detail - how could a
Spanish dancer have the name Costanzo? She
suggested he change his name to José, and
since he rather liked the sound of it, he did.
Greco and La Argentinita began their tour, and
made enough of a splash to catch the eye of
impresario Sol Hurok, a man known for his
uncanny managerial success in show business.
He signed them both for another tour, which
lasted until La Argentinita’s sudden death in
1945.
At this point, Greco had become established
enough to strike out on his own and found a
dance company: Ballet y Bailes de España de
José Greco. He resided in Spain while touring
all over Europe, although the Spanish couldn’t
believe he was Italian-American and could
perform their native Spanish dances so well;
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mostly people thought it was some kind of
publicity stunt and that he was truly Spanish. "I
was just an Italian with a Spanish heart who
loved the dance," José Greco said (Eichenbaum,
2001). Nonetheless, in a few years both Greco
and his company had become legends. Greco
caught the attention of the film industry, and
landed dancing roles in several major pictures.
One of these films, Brindis a Manolete, was a
biographical film about a bullfighter that did
poorly in Spain when it opened in 1948, but by
1951 had become all the rage in France. Lee
Schubert, owner of the Schubert Theatres,
happened to see this film while vacationing in
Cannes. The cinema’s audience was so taken
with Greco’s dance number that time after time
the projectionist was forced to rewind the film
and play it again. This was so extraordinary that
Lee Schubert sent one of his agents all the way
to Copenhagen on a quest to track down José
Greco and company and propose a six-month
performance series contract. Greco’s former
manager Sol Hurok got wind of the offer and
put in an offer of his own, but in the end Greco
chose to partner with Schubert. Soon, his
dance company was booked for a performance
series that lasted a month at the Schubert
Theatre on Broadway, which was then extended
for another month in the Century Theatre, a
truly astounding feat for any dance company at
that time, much less an ethnic dance company.
Along with the six-month tour around America,
Greco appeared on many television programs
including the Ed Sullivan Show. He took part in
Hollywood films produced by MGM, 20th
Century-Fox, and Michael Todd, one of the
premier film and television producers in the
1950s. Though he maintained several
residences in Spain which he considered home,
Greco performed and toured around the United
States and internationally almost nonstop
between 1951 and 1974, when he retired from
full-time performing. During that time he was
presented to Charles de Gaulle in Paris, and
knighted by the Spanish government.
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By this time Greco’s son, José Greco II, and his
daughters Carmela and Lola, were showing
great promise as dancers themselves. In 1984
Greco decided to create an all-new José Greco
Company that would feature his three children,
for whom he would act as manager. Their tour
started at the Joyce Theatre, billed as “The Next
Generation,” and lasted a year before there
were artistic differences within the family,
mainly between father and son, which proved
too difficult to resolve. Carmela once described
it this way, “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” (Okrent, 1999). José Greco II
remained with his father’s company until 1994,
when he started his own: José Greco II
Flamenco Dance Company.
In 1993, Greco took on a professorship at
Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, PA, a
college with a good drama department and a
strong program in dance interested especially in
ethnic dance. Around this time he was also
awarded funding from the National
Endowment for the Arts to recreate and
preserve in labanotation1 two of his signature
choreographies, the male solo “Dance of the
Horsemen,” and the female solo “Legend de
Petenera”. He taught up until age 82, when he
died of heart failure at his home in Lancaster on
December 31, 2000.
It would be hard to name another dancer who
has elevated Spanish dancing in the public eye
to the extent that José Greco did through the
prodigious accomplishments of his life and his
career. Despite any artistic differences or
father-son friction, Greco’s philosophy and
choreography live on through the efforts of José
Greco II and his company. This legacy and
tradition of Spanish dance that was so much a
1
For a full explanation of the dance notation
method of Labanotation, see the essay on the Dance
Notation Bureau.
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part of José Greco’s existence will certainly live
on through future decades.
Elizabeth Hollenbeck is an artist, writer, and
scholar. She is an MLS candidate at Texas
Woman's University specializing in archives and
digitization processes, and will graduate in
Spring 2014. Her fiction writing has been
published in the anthology Fight Like A Girl. In
2013, Elizabeth was selected to be a Dance
Heritage Coalition Archives and Preservation
Fellow, placed at Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival
in Becket, MA.
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