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"Trying to be myself is already hard enough"
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For the moment, and despite having trained
with choreographers of the likes of Pagés and Latorre, he tips the balance
in favor of performing. A question of respect. "In creation you have to know
how to create, not just to do for the sake of doing. You have to create in a rational
way, bearing in mind that flamenco has to go on being flamenco. There can be fusions
but not digressions; try to maintain the liking and pleasure that is felt when
flamenco is done".
This sybaritic philosophy is going to take shape in the bailaor's future projects.
In the long run, he intends to go forward solo. He does not want to give any sneak
previews, but assures that "I'm not going to digress much and I'm going to
try to contribute things to flamenco which have been lost and which are getting
more and more out of control". Such as what? "Such as the prevailing
confusion, instead of fusion". He thinks that one outweighs the other, but
he is not trying to give anyone a sermon: "This doesn't mean that I'm right
about everything; I might be the one who's wrong".
  
Photos: Daniel Muñoz
Applied to dancing, he shapes this "confusion" into an example: "If
you want to fuse a kind of music with jazz, with classical music, with contemporary
music, you're either very good at jazz, classical or contemporary music; or if
you intend to use those types of music, you have to make it flamenco, not try
to make it contemporary if you're not good at that branch". To do so, he
insists on personality: "Trying to be myself is already hard enough".
As his main support, Ángel Muñoz has the music: "I go with
the flow of what I'm listening to whether it be the guitar or cante, a violin
or something the percussionist does. Everything that is music is what leads me.
It could be that after some silence, the violin goes raaaaann and it blows
me away". And he turns this passion into advice when he is teaching: "If
you don't take advantage of the music as much as possible, if you don't enjoy
that music, doing steps just to do them is completely useless". The fact
that the music is strictly flamenco or not is the least of it. "I have no
problem with there being instruments outside flamenco there, provided that they
are in their place. You have to find them the right place and if it can't be found,
out. You shouldn't have more than what you have to have".
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"If you don't take advantage of the music as much as possible,
doing steps just to do them is completely useless"
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Percussion deserves a separate paragraph, due to the special interaction it
has with the dancing: "The concept of percussion is like that of any other
instrument; it's another accompaniment... except when you want to use it to seek
another effect". The Córdoba-born bailaor, who will take part in the
tour of the upcoming album by guitarist Víctor Monge Serranito, assures
that the percussion "shouldn't be pounding out any step, nor any music, but
rather it must be done with pleasure and in its place". In his opinion, the
difficulty lies in that "everyone wants to stand out when, nevertheless,
the percussionist who knows how to accompany by being there with a nice base gains
more. That has more merit than pounding because anyone knows how to do that. You
have to have technique but then know how to give pleasure to what you do".
Inspiration also takes part in that balance between technique and pleasure.
And for Ángel Muñoz this ingredient is inherent in music: "All
kinds of music always give you something. There's no type of music that I listen
to more; I usually listen to a bit of everything. Each one contributes something
to me at a given moment; it depends on what situation I'm in". Sometimes,
when the weight of the tours is too much for one's spirit, a kind of music which
illustrates that state can end up enriching the show: "The next day when
I got to the theater, that music was so deep inside me that I ended up putting
things together with it". If melancholy can be overwhelming in such cases,
it also occurs that when morale is high, "you might listen to the same thing
and it suggests different things to you. It is therefore not only that music which
influences me, but also the moment that it reaches me". What Ángel
Muñoz offers at the studio as well as on stage depends on it to a certain
extent.
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