A Conversation Around El Negro Meri

A Conversation Around "El Negro Meri"
By K. Meira Goldberg and Yinka Esi Graves
Filmed and edited by Miguel Ángel Rosales

Our conversation centers on two silent motion pictures, totaling just over a minute in length, both titled "Danse Espagnole de la Feria," which were filmed by the Lumière brothers between July 1 and July 8, 1900 at the Exposition Universelle in Paris [†]. The first clip is important because it is the earliest extant motion picture of a flamenco cuadro or performing group, explicitly contrasted here, as in the filmographic record which precedes it, to the dances of the escuela bolera, the classical and academic school of Spanish dance. But without a doubt, the greatest importance of this footage rests in the fact that the singer-dancer featured in the film is of African descent: Jacinto Padilla, "El Negro Meri." Padilla had been almost completely erased from flamenco history, and our conversation centers around the questions and problems which this raises for each of us as artists and members of the flamenco community.

We would like to give our special thanks to Julie Baggenstoss for her help with the production of this video.

† See the Lumière catalog 1123, "Danse espagnole de la Feria Sevillanos." Fragments from this film have been reproduced in the video recording of our conversation, with permission from Institut Lumière. © Institut Lumière.

A Conversation Around "El Negro Meri"

To learn more about this Lumière Brothers film:

Kiko Mora, "¡Y dale con Otero!... Flamencos en la Exposición Universal de París de 1900," Cadáver Paraíso (blog), June 11, 2016 (accessed, June 18, 2016).

Kiko Mora, "Who Is Who in the Lumière's Films of Spanish Song and Dance at the Paris Exposition, 1900," Le Grimh (Groupe de reflèxion sur l'image dans le monde hispanique), 10 May 2021.

K. Meira Goldberg, Sonidos Negros: On the Blackness of Flamenco (Oxford University Press, 2019)

Kiko Mora and K. Meira Goldberg, "Spain in the Basement: Dancing Race and Nation at the Paris Exposition, 1900," in Brynn Shiovitz, ed., The Body, the Dance and the Text: Essays on Performance and the Margins of History (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2019), 41-67.

K. Meira Goldberg, Sonidos negros: Sobre la Negritud del flamenco, translated by Kiko Mora (Granada: Editorial Libargo, 2022).

» K. Meira Goldberg es bailaora, coreógrafa, profesora y académica. Ha impulsado y colaborado en numerosos volúmenes editados, entre ellos Celebrating Flamenco's Tangled Roots: The Body Questions (2022). Su monografía Sonidos Negros: On the Blackness of Flamenco (2019 y, en español, 2022) ganó el premio Barnard Hewitt y recibió una mención honorífica para el premio Sally Banes Publication Award, ambos otorgados por la American Society for Theatre Research.

» K. Meira Goldberg is a flamenco performer, choreographer, teacher, and scholar. She has instigated and collaborated on numerous edited volumes, including Celebrating Flamenco's Tangled Roots: The Body Questions (2022). Her monograph Sonidos Negros: On the Blackness of Flamenco (2019 and, in Spanish, 2022) won the Barnard Hewitt Award and Honorable Mention for the Sally Banes Publication Award, both from the American Society for Theatre Research.

» Yinka Esi Graves es una creadora escénica británica y bailaora flamenco. Su trabajo explora los vínculos entre el flamenco y las formas artísticas contemporáneas arraigadas en la diáspora africana. Su primera obra en solitario, The Disappearing Act, que investiga la invisibilidad y el borrado en relación con la experiencia negra, se estrenó en el Festival de Flamenco de Nimes (Francia, 2023) y desde entonces ha sido presentada en diferentes festivales internacionales.

» Yinka Esi Graves is a British dance maker and flamenco artist. Her work excavates the links between flamenco and contemporary forms rooted in the African diaspora. Graves's first solo work, The Disappearing Act, premiered at the Nimes Flamenco Festival (France 2023) and has subsequently toured to international festivals. This piece is the culmination of Yinka's multidisciplinary exploration of invisibility and erasure as it pertains to the black experience.