Argentinita was born of Spanish parents in Buenos Aires, in 1898, and taken back to Spain by them when she was four years old. At that early age she commenced her training in the Spanish dance in all its varied forms and styles, for she was equally at home in the Spanish Classic dance as she was in the Gypsy or Flamenco dances. Those who saw the poem she could make from _las Soleares_ of Andulasia, the basic rhythm of all Spanish gypsy dances, know how she gave them the magic of a magic land; or the gay _Alegrias_, performed in the sinuous manner, rich with contrasts of slow, soft, and energetic movements, with the characteristic stamping, stomping, sole-tapping, clapping, and finger-snapping. It was in the _Alegrias_ that Argentinita let her fancy roam with the slow tempo of the music. The European dance analysts had noted that here, as also at other times and places, Argentinita danced to please herself. When the tempo quickened, her mood changed to one of gaiety and abandon. It is a difficult matter for me to pin down my memories of this splendid artist and her work: _las Sevillianas_, the national dance of Seville, danced by all classes and conditions of people, the Queen of Flamenco dances; or the _Bulerias_, the most typical of all gypsy dances, light and gay, the dance of the fiesta. Argentinita was not only a dancer. She was an actress of the first order. She had been a member of Martinez Sierra’s interesting and vital creative theatre in Madrid. She sang _Chansons Populaires_ in a curiously throaty, plaintive little voice that could, nevertheless, fill the largest theatre, despite the cameo-like quality of her art, fill even the Metropolitan Opera House, with the sound, the color, the atmosphere of Spain. Dancer of Spain that she was, her repertoire was not by any means confined to the dance and music and life of the peoples of the Iberian peninsula. She traveled far afield for her material, through the towns and villages of South and Central America. Yet she was no mere copyist. Works and ideas she found were transmuted into terms of the theatre by means of a subtle alchemy. She had a deep knowledge of the entire Spanish dance tradition, and knew it all, understood its wide historical and regional changes. In her regional works, from Spanish folk to the heart of the Andes, she kept the flavor of the original, but personalized the dances. About them all was a fundamental honesty; nothing was done for show. There were no heroics; no athleticism. In addition to the _Alegrias_, _Sevillianas_, _Fandangos_, _Jotas_ of Spain, the folk dances and folk songs of Brazil, Argentina, Peru, and the remote places of Latin America and of its Indian villages were hers. None who ever saw her do it can ever quite obliterate the memory of _El Huayno_, implicit as it was with the stark dignity and nobility of the Inca woman, and called by one critic, “the greatest dance of our generation.”