`It is all in my heart since forever'

Angelita Vargas is on the telephone from her home in Seville, and the echo on the line is compounded by her strong gitana, or gypsy, accent. "Nobody," she growls, "Nobody in the world taught me to dance flamenco. It is all in my heart since forever." It is a voice and a statement that brooks no arguments, but with Angelita Vargas, there is a lifetime of achievement to lend it weight. A world-renowned bailaora, or flamenco dancer, who comes to the National Concert Hall for just one night next week, Vargas started her professional career at the age of three.

She firmly believes that the flamenco was in her, just waiting to get out. By the age of eight, she was dancing in flamenco festivals all over Spain, with the name La Gitanilla or "the little gypsy".

"When I was 11, I said to my mother: `I must dance, I will dance'. She had to listen to me. I mean, I had always been a dancer but I knew I must do nothing else in my life than dance. She understood."

No spoilt child star, Vargas comes from gitana or gypsy stock, and the flamenco tradition has been practised and honoured in her extended family for generations. She explains that the pequenitas, or little ones, are always encouraged to dance and sing, on a par with the older, respected bailaoras or cantadors (singers) in the family group. Soon, aficionados were coming from far and wide to listen and watch La Gitanilla sing and dance.

Vargas hails from Extremadura, a mountainous region running between Madrid and the Portuguese border. It is the homeland of many semi-nomadic gypsy tribes and of fundamental importance to the history of flamenco.

Clearly it is also of fundamental importance to Vargas - in Seville, she clicks her phone on to conference call and other ghostly voices start clamouring to be heard. When there is a fear of being misunderstood, the cry goes out for Paco Bech, the hapless promoter of her company who has the task of translating the more cryptic statements.

"The homeland is the heart of flamenco," says one voice. "I don't know a place more important," says another. The disembodied voices belong to her husband Jose Cortes and to various other members of her dance company. The machinegun fire statements of passion are getting a little deafening and very confusing, but out of the chaos comes a story.

When Vargas started to dance in one of the most renowned flamenco tablaos in Madrid, Las Brujas - the name means "The Witches" - she met Jose Cortes, himself a renowned flamenco dancer. They danced together, fell in love and got married; Angelita was 15. They have danced together ever since. Another cacophony goes up when the question of the importance of family arises and soon the cry for Paco goes out.

The couple's son, Joselito, dances with them, although he will not be coming to Ireland. Vargas's nephew, a respected singer with three albums under his belt who goes by the name of El Potito, will accompany her alongside another singer, El Varilla and two palmeros, or to put it rather crudely, clappers: El Electrico and El Bobote. "Family is everything," Vargas delivers stoutly, out of the hubbub.

However, this emphasis on the family and on the homeland should not be mistaken for the provincial - the Angelita Vargas company has travelled extensively in South America, Japan, Holland and Japan, done a season on Broadway in New York and took part in Expo '98 in Lisbon.

The show she will be bringing to Dublin is called Extremo Puro and when it was first presented at Seville's 10th Bienal de Arte Flamenco, the most prestigious festival of flamenco in Spain, the critical response was resoundingly positive. Puro means pure but to Angelita, and to the voices on the end of a phone line in Seville it means much, much more.

"Flamenco is puro. It is telling what my heart is feeling; it depends on what I am thinking at any one time . . . Every time I dance, the audience will see something new, something they have never seen before."

For much of the audience in the National Concert Hall, this will quite literally be true. Vargas's company and the puro style is different to the flamenco dance companies such as that of Joaquin Cortes, who sold out at the Point theatre on his last visit to Ireland. As the Extremo Puro name suggests, Angelita - whose style has influenced the renowned flamenco bailaora, Manuela Carasco - sticks firmly to the moves, rhythms and moods of her gypsy heritage, whereas other companies will apply contemporary style or new moves to their flamenco. Each performance by the Vargas company is not strictly rehearsed but relies, they say, on inspiration rather than a strict choreography.

For all that Vargas was the product of no school or academy, much of her own time is now spent passing on her skills to a new generation. For her, this is as much about communication as it is about education - she has said before "I speak with my dancing". In the flurry of speech that whirls from Seville about dancing, about the gitana flamenco heritage and about her extended family, her description of teaching is a moment of uncharacteristic quiet simplicity: "It delights me".

Extremo Puro is at the National Concert Hall on Tuesday