Born in Casablanca, Antonio Vargas was attracted to Flamenco at a very early age. His inborn musicality could equally have drawn him to become a percussionist or a concert cellist.

However his passion for the art of Flamenco and the full realisation of its potentials have been the driving force behind his long and brilliant career.

His musical education started when he was only a toddler, and one could say that a career as a musician would have fit his parents' expectations. However, when his family moved to London as he was nine years old, he had the
opportunity not only to continue his musical education, but also to benefit from a myriad of dance teachers and schools, and from being exposed to one of the most eclectic
art scenes in the world. It was like being in the womb of creativity.

Had he been taller, the Flamenco world might have suffered a great tragedy and lost him to ballet; but as fate would have it, his physique did not conform with the ballet masters' specifications, and his teacher advised him to do Spanish Dance. That must have awoken in him recollections of his aunts, both flamenco dancers, and the rest is history. As soon as he could, he escaped to Spain and immersed himself in the mecca of Flamenco, learning with the best teachers in Spain at the time, not only to dance but also to play the Flamenco guitar.

Antonio's was the great generation of flamenco personalities: Antonio Gades, Mario Maya, ElGüito, Cristina Hoyos, Manolete - names that are synonymous with the recent
high profile of flamenco world-wide. His main teacher was Antonio Marín, a one-leg genius who created dancing monsters through his daughters' feet. Soon he had auditioned and been selected when he was only eighteen years old as a member of the Pilar Lopez Company, followed by the Rafael de Cordova Company. With them he toured extensively throughout Europe and South America, and absorbed invaluable information regarding staging, theatre lighting, and artistic direction.

Antonio has always been a pioneer in the field of
Flamenco Dance Theatre. Back in 1962, when he formed his first company, he had already the desire to take Flamenco out of the tight boundaries of the traditional, predictable performances that most audiences were used to; he always believed that Flamenco could lend itself to interpret great novelists and poets and that it could be put
on stage side by side with the most established,
mainstream art-forms, such as opera and
choral works, without jeopardising its authenticity.

The list of Antonio's works is extensive. From opera to
film, from small stage performances to big festivals,
from solo performances to productions with the best
artists that Spain has to offer at the moment, Antonio has
done it all, including a television show with the
Beatles (Granada Television, 1964); he played the Fiddler
in a London production of Fiddler on the Roof (Her
Majesty's Theatre, 1967); he has created his own
Flamenco Dance Theatre works and adapted well known plays and novels to the Flamenco repertoire.