# Pruebas de acceso a facultades, escuelas técnicas superiores y colegios universitarios

Comunidad: | Comunidad Valenciana
convocatoria: | Septiembre de 1997
Modalidad: | LOGSE - Todas
Ejercicio: | 1er Ejercicio B
Asignatura: | Inglés
Obligatoriedad: | Obligatoria
Duración: | 60 minutos
Baremo: | Reading comprehension: 2 points (1 point each); True/False: 1 point (0.5 each); Find synonym: 1 point (0.5 each); Multiple choice: 2 points (0.5 each); Composition. 4 points.

## Part A. Reading comprehension

Read the following text:

The Flamenco Kid

It seems to happen every few generations - the explosion of interest in flamenco culture outside the confines of Spain. Before she began Middlemarch, George Eliot wrote her only verse drama, The Spanish Gypsy, about the torrid connection between freedom and romance. Decades later, the poetry of Federico García Lorca took the rhythms of Andalusia around the world, before the poet himself was silenced by tyranny. The latest detonation of the gitane style comes by grace of Joaquín Cortes, a knife-thin, baby-faced diminutive who makes the music play in time with him rather than the reverse.

So electrifying is his interpretation to the flamenco culture - which combines what he learned at Spain's Ballet National with what he took in from his Gypsy family - that his stage presence is being "translated" into a great amount of cultural idioms. You can see him courting Marisa Paredes in Pedro Almodovar's The Flower of my Secret. You can catch his television endorsement of a new car, bodly named the "Ibiza Passion". And he's touring the world with his dance troup in a show called Gypsy Passion (that word again). They say he loses more than four pounds during every performance, which is one way of living for your art.

"Just because I'm a Gypsy," Cortes said, "it doesn't mean that we all go around with a goat and a barrel organ." No indeed. But call it "the New Flamenco" as often as you like, it's the old flamenco - that toxic blend of Moorish, Jewish, and Gypsy - that keeps coming, and keeps reviving, and never dies.

I. Answer the questions using your own words:

1. According to the text, which are the three main performances (actuaciones) for which Joaquín Cortés is well known?
2. Why is this man's way of dancing so special?

II. Are the following statements True (T) or False (F)?

1. Both George Eliot and Federico García Lorca wrote about gypsies and flamenco.
2. A popular image of gypsies is that of a group of people who go from one place to another playing an organ and making a show with a goat in the streets.

III. Find a word or phrase in the text which, in the context, is similar in meaning to...

1. Dictatorial government.
2. It is said when a famous person presents a product in an advertisement or TV commercial.

III. Choose a, b, c, or d in each question below. Only one choice is correct.

1. Gypsy passion is...
   1. the name of a car.
   2. the name of a show.
   3. the name of a film.
   4. the name of a book.
2. Flamenco...
   1. Had never been popular outside Spain up to now.
   2. was pursued by the government during some time.
   3. can have many manifestations and never dies.
   4. is always present in Marisa Paredes's films.
3. Almost at the end of the second paragraph, the autor says "(that word again)" because...
   1. he is tired of finding that word everywhere.
   2. it seems significative of Cortés's art.
   3. he likes that word very much.
   4. it is a Spanish word.
4. People like Joaquín Cortés because...
   1. he is very good-looking.
   2. he is a good and passionate dancer.
   3. he is very nice in the TV commercial.
   4. he is a gypsy.

## Part B. Composition (100-150 words approximately)

Choose one of the following two topics:

1. Gypsies and racism.
2. There are people who love their profession and people who hate it. Which are your criteria for choosing your future profession?

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