Blonde, with blue garlic, a Mary Carmen Hernandez everyone knows her in Güímar as Carmen ‘La Mora’. All because she spent the first 18 years of her life in Tetouan, when Morocco was still a Spanish protectorate, but also because her grandfather, the renowned Güimarero poet, Arístides Hernández Mora bore that last name. Her father, also a güimarero, was a soldier during the Civil War and in Africa, and later an exporter of bananas from Morocco. She fondly remembers that time, which according to her marked her so much, as to continue appreciating Andalusian food – her maternal grandmother was hers – and Arabic.
Just 50 years ago, Mary Carmen began almost professionally in dance, which today not only continues to teach in Güímar but also practicing on stage at 68 years of age. She created the D’Anitra school in 1972, which she kept open until 1998, combining it from 1990 with a school in Candelaria. In 2004 it closed in Candelaria and after a few years of hiatus it reopened in 2008 as Maria Mora dance companyuntil today, in which he teaches at the artistic and cultural headquarters that the City Council has created in the old Hernández Merkel school.
Currently, she is awaiting the drafting of the statutes of the Puro Movimiento association to manage the school, “to leave everything tied up, because I am not going to live all my life,” says Mary Carmen Hernández, who is no longer alone as a large part of his professional career. “I have -he tells us- six teachers, three who are dedicated to contemporary and classical dance, plus another three for belly dance, children’s dance and tap dance, I am gradually retiring to dedicate myself to management, so that I don’t everything done so far for 50 years is lost”, he tells us.
More than fifty students, from the age of four onwards, dance in Mary Morathe majority learning and others less perfecting, “they have always been my social schools, a training center, but it is also a center for professional improvement, which hardly exists on the Island. Great artists have come from here, although this is pyramidal, just at the bottom of the pyramid come five or six, if they come at all”.
Lifetime Achievement Awards for Carmen ‘La Mora’
Mary Carmen Hernández García, Carmen ‘La Mora’, has received awards throughout her long career, such as the Argenta de Franquis award that the Güímar City Council awarded her four years ago, but she is satisfied with the last two with which has been distinguished: the best Canarian videodance work, with ‘Alma de lava’ and the honorary award ‘For the love of Dance’ at DanzaTTack 2022. Awards that keep her ability to continue on stage intact, now when prepares the play staged by Guillermo Horta in which she takes a tour of her half-century as a dancer: “The play is called ‘Autumn Lady’, because I am in the autumn of my life.
It is a tour of all the sensations that I have experienced with dance, a real challenge at my age to get on stage alone. The premiere will be on May 12 at the DanzaTTack in El Sauzal”. But also, in this year that marks her 50th anniversary in the world of dance, Carmen Hernández has in mind to make a great ‘Movie maker’ in the Plaza de San Pedro where she intends to bring together all those male and female dancers who came out of her school from 1972 to today, for which “I am already compiling videos with Domingo The Foguetero”.
But Carmen ‘La Mora’ has not only been a dancer and teacher, but also a stage director, with a long history in the Carnival of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, first with José Antonio Plaza and then seven years with Sergio García, as deputy artistic director. She was a choreographer and dancer for Los Danzarines Canarios and also directed some galas at the San Pedro de Güímar festivities, “until Juan Carlos Armas arrived and they always gave them to him, pure politicking, nothing to do with my spectacular galas”, he says without false modesty. “I have a resume and now with a 50-year career, I’m not going to beg for a little bit,” he says when referring to the Güímar City Council, “with whom the relationship is good, but I’m tired, I’m not going to be behind them” .
As she recalled four years ago, when, coinciding with International Women’s Day, she was awarded the Argenta de Franquis award, Carmen ‘La Mora’ is clear that “very little has been committed to dance and the performing arts. In Güímar, a large auditorium is needed, because the ECLA -cultural space in the old Los Angeles Cinema- is fine for small things, but you cannot put on a great play or a dance performance. I had to do two functions with the school so that all the parents could enter”, while pointing out that “they are going to expand the Hernández Merkel auditorium, but it will not have the space and hearing of an auditorium either, which is what Güímar needs. ”.
