THE friends, family and financial backers of Joaquin Corte's were not behind the door when God handed out hyperbole. His uncle, Cristobal Reyes - an eminent flamenco dancer in his own right - is a quiet-spoken, unassuming man offstage. But he is not, bashful in making enormous claims for the nephew he has so assiduously groomed to "break the mould" of Spanish dance traditions.
"You could take him as the Picasso of dance, a Picasso or a Dali," Reyes says, quite matter-of-factly, during a break in rehearsals for Cortes's current show, Pasion Gitana, in Madrid last week. "Picasso was a great classical painter, and then went on from there. Joaquin has demonstrated that he is a great classical dancer, and his knowledge of traditional dance is extraordinary. Then he breaks away to bring dance to the masses.
It was Reyes who told the young Corte's that, if he wanted to be a "more complete dancer", he should train with the Spanish National Ballet, as well as fully absorbing his own gypsy family's strong flamenco traditions. Corte's rose to the rank of solo artist at the national, company in his teens, and then left to create a series of increasingly controversial - and increasingly successful - "fusion" shows which combine elements of classical, flamenco and contemporary dance with the panache of the rock spectacular.
In the rehearsal, Corte's had just exhibited his genius for dancing in pretty uncontradictable terms. He can swoop and soar like an eagle, oscillate and strike like a cobra, feint with the grace of a matador and summon up the gods of thunder with the hammers of his heels. In this simple context - a bare room with mirrors - his great technical resources are actually more evident than in the videos of his stage spectaculars.
Stripped of the rock `n' roll light show, the Armani costumes, the swirling dry ice and the multitudinous applause, what remains is a heart-stopping display of passionate movement. The live flamenco mini-orchestra, composed of some of the best musicians in the field, seems relaxed and good humoured, but lays down rigorously taut rhythms. The other dancers, some of the most beautiful young women I have ever seen in one room, austerely clad in black work-out gear, flow, meld, flair and stamp with - (mostly) awesome precision, but their nerves seem stretched like bow strings.
Corte's is the string master, pitilessly drawing them tighter and tighter and tighter, whooping with joy when they, get it right, violently stamping out the beat on his steel heels when they begin to lose it. His own solos are exemplary moments of contained passion, positively chaste compared to the overt sensuality of some of his stage performances, and none the less impressive for that. He seems a very serious, driven young man, doing a day's, work in an hour; but one is also aware that he has eyes in the back of his head, which check constantly that the press photographers are following his every inflection.
Corte's is in the eye of a stormy polemic in Spanish dance and music circles. Its terms ("roots", "commercialisation", "heritage", "cross-over", "purist", "fusion") often echo the debate between modernisers and traditionalists in Irish music and dance today.
Not even the most severe flamencologos deny him greatness - a term such people do not use lightly - as a dancer. It is what he does with the dance - putting the purest of both classical and flamenco graces at the service of a brash, populist enterprise - which raises doubts about his artistic genius, and his staying power.
He is not the first person to successfully export flamenco. Names like Paco de Lucia, Paco Peila, Antonio Gades, and Cristobal Reyes's own Cumbre Flamenco have already done top dollar from San Francisco to Tokyo. Maria Pages's flamenco-influenced dances have played a central role in the success of Riverdance.
Nor is he the first to "cross-breed" Flamenco with other cultures. Latin American influences were absorbed in the last century, jazz and blues in this one, without much difficulty. The open question is whether Corte's has enriched and advanced the tradition, or merely marketed it more sexily. There is no question that none of his predecessors has become as big a star.
Many of the elements of this stardom have little or nothing to do with dance. Much of it is probably down to the astute management of Pino Sagliocco, the Italian-born rock entrepreneur who brought Madonna and Michael Jackson to Spain, and persuaded Montserrat Caballe to sing Barcelona with Freddie Mercury. Sagliocco describes Corte's as "a safe investment, an asset in the ascendent". Since Sagliocco took over, the dancer has appeared in films by Carols Saura (Flamenco) and Pedro Almodovar (The Flower of My Secret). He has modelled clothes for Giorgio Armani, who has returned the compliment by designing - under Corte's's supervision - the costumes for Pasion Gitana.
Corte's has given interviews which make him sound like a superbrat. He has told the Spanish Ministry of Culture to keep their lousy grants to buy chewing gum. He has told the Sunday Times that he likes to sit in cafes with his formidable publicist, Macarena Blancbon, awarding points to beautiful women as they pass by.
He has sounded shamelessly grandiose in his ambitions: "I want to eat the world ... I want to be in the history books ... I want to continue making history."
His private life is a favourite theme of what the Spanish charmingly call "the press of the heart,". His current relationship with Naomi Campbell gets him another page of coverage (by Chris Illey) in the Sunday Times and consumes column inches and TV minutes across the world. His show is promoted as much as an erotic, sensation as a work of art. Speculation on projects with Prince keep the pot boiling, and the tickets selling.
These very factors, which have helped make Pasion Gitana a showbusiness legend in Spain, Europe and the US, have undermined his credentials with many of those whose approval he perhaps most keenly needs. The most striking thing about Joaquin Corte's after his talent as a dancer is his consuming hunger for approval, or just for recognition.
It palpably drives him, whether he is on stage, talking to a television camera, or watching journalists watching him at rehearsals. Few artists, and no stars, lack this hunger, and some pang of it is probably a necessary stimulant to greatness. But in Cortes's eyes, and even in some of his stage gestures, it is peculiarly naked, an engaging or embarrassing characteristic according to the circumstances.
It may be that he has now decided, in pursuit of a greater degree of peer approval, to tone down the more Flamboyant aspects of his public image. Or it may be that he has been misrepresented. Certainly, superbrat is nowhere to be seen when he gives The Irish Times an interview, towards the end of a gruelling press schedule. He is courteous, attentive and charming and at, pains to foreground the artistic quality of his work.
He makes a strong defence of his commitment to cultural mestizaje, an ambiguous word in Spanish, which can be read either as "crossbreeding" or "mongrel". It has particular significance for Spanish Romany gypsies, whose traditions have included a strong, "taboo on intermarriage with payos; ("whites"), and who have experienced bitter (and continuing) racial persecution.
ASKED if he does not fear diluting the authenticity of flamenco with all the other elements in Pasion Gitana, she replies: "There are people of my race who talk like that. But I don't think that, because I am a gypsy, I should only dance flamenco. I want to mix my culture with other cultures to do something which is universal. Pasion Gitana, for me, is not a work of flamenco. It is a musical with dance, where everything in the feeling which the gypsy people know as flamenco can come out a little. I respect the opinion of the purists, but they want a flamenco which is closed. I am a gypsy with my roots in flamenco, but I am also a person who is open to the world. As an artist, I want to bring Spanish culture to the world at a high level, and I think that should be supported."
He says he is conscious of his role as an ambassador for the gypsy people: "Our image is that of a third-rate people, bad people, a minority. I want to show a much more interesting cultural image."
Julio Bravo, dance critic for the conservative Spanish newspaper ABC, has said that Cortes wants the Flamenco dance to look upon itself in his mirror and beat to his tempo". Does Corte's not feel that such writing puts an impossible burden on his 27-year-old shoulders?.
Hombre, claro, this responsibility weighs upon me because I think now in all the world of flamenco I am perhaps the best-known personality internationally. I try to give it the best possible image.
Surely, then, all the extraneous publicity about Armani, and about his private life, must be at least an irritating distraction? "If I were famous for my private life, this would be a problem. But it's the other way around; my private life is famous because of what I do in my work, because of what I contribute."
He says he does not like to talk about his personal relationships. Then why does Naomi Campbell choose to go on Spanish TV to say she is in love with him, as she did the previous week?
He smiles graciously, without any obvious irritation, and answers a question he must have been asked a hundred times. "That is because she is she, and I am I." Fair play.
One of the opening numbers in Pasion Gitana is Ambiguedad in which he dances alone with his female company, all dressed as men. An American critic has praised his skill in switching sexual characteristics, dancing like a woman himself and "thus eroticising both men and women". He doesn't see it like that, he says.
"I like to dance with women because they have more facility for all types of technique. It would have been, difficult to find eight men who could do such complicated moves." But surely there is a strong, and intended, sexual spark? "This is purely secondary. I don't ask the women to strip, I don't take off my own clothes as an erotic tactic it's more spiritual, less banal, than that."
Nevertheless, Joaquin a chara, you are perceived and promoted as an erotic symbol...
"Yes, but I tell you sincerely I don't know why. I work from the inside, not the outside. I'm possibly a sexual person inside, and that's reflected outside, but I don't seek this. I want to express the soul, and, above all, I seek quality of serious work, done with rigour."
Speaking of which, one of his strongest supporters, the Italian dance writer Vittoria Ottolenghi, has perhaps made the most telling criticism of him. He listens respectfully, without a hint of rancour, while I quote him her comment: "I'm a little afraid for him, because the strength of the great dancer is great choreography, and this I still do not see in him."
It is a criticism which cuts to the heart of his current project, and he has just told me that he now sees himself more as a choreographer than as a dancer. But he takes it on the chin.
She admires me and always speaks well of me. But she sees me as young and thinks I need to mature. No critic will say you are loo per cent good. What they want, God knows. But I hope the next time I please her more." Very few artists can forgive those who cite their bad, reviews, but he shakes my hand in parting as warmly as when he had greeted me.
He has one more interview to do, and I make my way back to the rehearsal room to watch the dancers, not a burdensome task. Twenty minutes later, I hear him running up the corridor. He lopes into the room like a hunting wolf, as though he were starting a fresh day's work, not ending a punishing 12-hour schedule. He moves from dancer to dancer, hectoring and encouraging. He calls for a change of music. He listens to news from a messenger. He is totally focused, totally absorbed, and for once I do not think he even knows there is a journalist present.
Corte's may have conquered the world already, but conquering the work will be another question, which may not be resolved in his lifetime. Applause, rock `n' roll hyperbole and box office dollars might satisfy a lesser talent, but Corte's is still very obviously hungry for something else.