Three instants of the same dance that changed flamenco forever.

As with Chocolate, Paco Manzano chose the triptych. Three frames within the same mount — Mario Maya at the Teatro Alcalá Palace in Madrid, during the Cumbre Flamenca of 1986, in black waistcoat and white shirt, in three different positions of the same movement. The sequence does not tell the dance — it analyses it. And in that analysis is everything: the posture, the arms, the weight of the body on the legs, the head following the gesture.

Mario Maya was in 1986 the most influential choreographer and dancer of his generation. Born in Granada to a Gypsy family, he had trained in the classical school of flamenco and had made the leap that very few made: integrating contemporary theatrical technique into jondo dance without betraying its essence. His large-format shows — Camelamos Naquerar, Ay Jondo — had taken flamenco to the most important theatres in Europe and America, and had demonstrated that Gypsy dance could speak to the world without losing its soul.

Manzano captured him in the purest moment — not in the large-format show but in the recital, at the Teatro Alcalá Palace, before an audience of aficionados who had known him before fame. The triptych is a lesson in the anatomy of flamenco dance: how the body of a dancer of lineage organises space, time and emotion in a single movement.

This photograph hangs today on the walls of Cardamomo. If you are here it is because you saw it in the room. Now you know what happened that night.