Helba Huara

Helba Muñoz Huara was born in 1900 in Cusco, Peru, to a Spanish medical doctor named Muñoz. Muñoz traveled from Spain and while in Brazil, met his future wife and immigrated to Peru. While she was still a young child, the family immigrated to Buenos Aires, Argentina. The family were impoverished and from around the age of nine, Huara danced to earn money.[1][2] Beginning her career with a Russian dance troupe, Huara quickly took the stage name Helba Huara and dropped the use of Muñoz. Dancing with extreme passion, with a tragic air and intense energy, she soon developed a unique style.[1] Huara married at age fourteen and had a daughter, Elsa Henríquez, who would later become an illustrator. Huara became well known, performing in Argentina, Bolivia and Peru.[2] She was photographed by the noted Vargas Brothers, Carlos and Miguel, in 1924. Their images of her were not erotic photographs, but rather allowed her to act out the persona she projected.[3] She met Gonzalo More, a Peruvian journalist who came to conduct an interview for his brother's paper after seeing her dance in Lima.[4] Soon she and her daughter fled the unhappy family life with Huara's husband, going with More to Havana before making their way to the United States.[2]

Arriving in the U.S. Huara was hired for the prestigious Ziegfeld Follies and billed as a captivating Spanish or Peruvian dancer,[2] though according to Variety her early performances were under another name.[5] She also appeared in shows at the Guild and Shubert Theaters. In 1927, she appeared on Broadway in A Night in Spain[6] and though billed as part of the chorus, almost immediately was being singled out for her performances, with her "Dance of Fate" and "Dance of the Snakes".[7][8] Quickly, the posters for the show were revised to show her as one of the stars.[9] When the show closed on Broadway, it made a nationwide tour throughout 1928 with Huara appearing successfully in such venues as Abilene, Chicago, Detroit, Oakland, and San Francisco, among others.[10][11][12] Wildly inventive biographies of Huara's origins appeared in the press, adding to her allure.[13][14]

Huara's dances were described as a fusion of Peruvian folklore and Spanish techniques, using castagnets and sinuous, snake-like movements, proving a technical skill which was hypnotizing and bewitching.[15] Performed to modern music composed by artists like Arthur Honegger and Vincent d'Indy, she balanced her wild "Incan" abandon with the bohemian music and style of the period.[16] Huara designed her own costumes and even took films of her movements in slow motion so that she could patent her dance moves.[17] In 1930, she played in the musical Nina Rose, at the Majestic Theatre.[18] The following year, she was the subject of photographs entered in the Rochester International Salon of Photography by Dr. Max Thorek.[19] Suffering from a nervous disorder and increasing deafness, Huara and More, left the United States for Paris.[2]

In 1931, Huara, More and Henríquez arrived in Paris, where Huara, became known as "the dancing Inca".[20][21][6] She performed at several of the soirées hosted by Désirée Lieven, an expatriate from Lithuania who often was referred to as a princess and became the center of leftist intelligentsia activities in Paris.[20][22][23] Huara's elaborate costumes and dancing style combined savagery and soul. More served as Huara’s accompanist and the two caught Anaïs Nin’s attention when she saw Huara perform the "Dance of the Woman without Arms" in the early 1930s at the Théâtre de la Gaîeté. In 1933, Huara and More toured Germany to much acclaim, [6] afterwards continuing to perform in Paris through 1935.[24] In 1936, Huara and More attended a party where they met Nin for the first time. By that time, Huara's deafness and illness had impacted her ability to continue dancing. She and More lived in a small basement apartment, shared with other revolutionary figures who opposed the conservatives in the Spanish Civil War.[25] In her diaries, Nin wrote that she was the benefactress of the couple, though in actuality Nin was having an affair with More.[2] She rented a houseboat on the Seine to facilitate her rendezvous with More.[26] In her journals Nin referred to More as "Rango" and Huara as "Zara"[21] disparaging Huara as a neurotic, dependent on her husband's care. In actuality, More was an alcoholic, who preferred socializing to work.[27]

In March 1940, Huara and More fled France and arrived in New York City.[28] During World War II, Nin set More up with a printing press in the United States, but the business failed due to his mismanagement.[2] Huara ran a dance studio in New York, where she taught students like the musicologist Rosa Alarco.[29] At the end of the war, the couple returned to Paris,[2] where Huara remained a fixture among the avant-garde circles, before having to withdraw from activities due to illness and loss of her sight.[2][30]

Huara died in Paris in 1986.[2] Huara was the central character in a trilogy of novels by Carlos Calderón Fajardo, La noche humana which focus on the Peruvian expatriate community of Paris who were political leftists.[31][22] In 2017, Revista Vuelapluma (volume 10), a journal from the Universidad de Ciencias y Humanidades of Los Olivos published a chronicle of Huara's life by the journalist Pablo Paredes.[32]