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Blanca del Rey, flamenco bailaora. Interview (and 3)

And the maestra. The mirror is within

Silvia Calado. Madrid, September 2006
Photos: Daniel Muñoz

Once up in age, Blanca del Rey has devoted part of her time to the following generations of bailaores, as a maestra or as a talent scout. But she takes teaching and ‘assessment’ cautiously, since she advocates experience itself as training. And the thing is that you can only manage to “interiorize life” over time.

Blanca del Rey teaches mantón in
Festival de Jerez (Photo: Daniel Muñoz)

That soleá has caught on so well that the teaching of the shawl has been specialized in. How do you tackle the facet of teaching?

That’s the question. If you pick up a shawl and you see it as a shawl, if you don’t project its playful side, its dreamy side, that way of winning you over, of letting it dance, you haven’t gotten it at all. The shawl teaches you that life is letting it run its course, for it to go through us, for it to unravel day by day and to feel the moment, here and now. If you don’t pick up the shawl and caress it, feel it, move it respectfully, with admiration towards its beauty, towards its flight when you toss it and watch how it spreads open like a peacock... If you don’t dream it like that, there’s no soleá with a shawl. There’s a shawl which moves. There’s no devotion; your energy doesn’t bring the shawl to life. The shawl pulls together your life. We’re really dim because we don’t realize that everything’s alive.

Is it hard to teach?

I tell them this when they’re with me. But then if they go back again to the spiral of technique, study and the mirror, I can’t do anything. That’s all right, but be really careful because you’ll end up on the outside. There are people who dance in front of the mirror, they haven’t gone beyond themselves, so they don’t live themselves, they just perform. The mirror is really dangerous. The true mirror is inside you. If they’re interiorizing the baile, I can assure you that they aren’t disharmonized. What disharmonizes is fear, because they’re defending themselves, they’re fighting instead of dancing. We live in a society in which fear is fostered more and more. It’s really hard to make people see that it all starts right there. Nobody recognizes that he’s afraid.

As a maestra, how would you size up today’s baile? Do you think temperament and aggressiveness are confused?

	Blanca del Rey teaches mantón in Festival de Jerez (Photo: Daniel Muñoz)

It’s a reflection of society. I have to get there, I have to get there... People dance furiously. Why? Could there be anything more beautiful than someone strong breaking a rhythm stoically? Let there be a shout at a given moment, but make it internal, not superficial. These borders between feelings and attitudes are very delicate. There’s purely mental energy and other inside energy. You feel it when you interiorize everything, when you’re breathing, feeling... If people only knew the potential we have, if they only knew where the strength lies. It’s come to me in time. I stop dancing and I talk as if I hadn’t danced, with what I’ve developed. And I think it’s because I’ve danced without any struggle, without any aspiration; I haven’t danced stressed. I’ve danced with internal energy, not mental. You have to set aside your mind to dance; it’s your soul that has to be expressed. Your mind just serves to plan a choreography, but it has to be set aside afterwards. The art isn’t in the mind; it’s in the emotion with sediment.

Criticism?

The precision’s being lost of doing the flamenco styles the way they should be, since nowadays they do a potpourri of rhythms. Are you dancing por soleá or why are you dancing? It’s not a soleá anymore, it’s a soleá por bulerías. And if they dance alegrías, they’re practically bulerías. It’s all bulerías. That precision is lacking which means the respect of flamenco styles. You shouldn’t use them, but dance them and penetrate them through what the rhythm’s telling you.

If the siguiriya is human tragedy, how can you finish it off por bulerías, when the bulería comes from ‘burla’ (joke or gibe)? It seems crazy because the rhythm’s already telling you what it is. The seguiriya is drama. The soleá is that pain you’ve already endured and you let come out. Then, you either dance soleá por bulerías or you dance soleá. You can also start off por soleá and finish with soleá por bulerías. But now you no longer even start off por soleá! They’re styles which are being lost because they’re being distorted. Each style leads you to express life itself. And that’s why an artform like flamenco is born, which isn’t spontaneously generated, but rather over hundreds of years. Each style is a vital experience of drama, tragedy, joy, sensuality. If you take away its fundamental base, what you’re doing is a display of technique and you aren’t dancing flamenco. And things are moving towards display of technique and the essence, which is intangible, is being lost.

A lot of young bailaores are listening to you. Any advice?

It’s really hard. The advice is life itself. If your baile is aimed at achieving things, even if you’re talented, the creative energy doesn’t come; the mental planning energy comes. Baile is a gift God has given to you. It’s really clear in quacks. There are those who used to be really good and when they got the money fever, which is a kind of energy to achieve, they go into a cycle of possession, and their healing energy leaves them, which is giving, the way nature gives. There’s another illness: not being able to see that everyone has beauty and contributes their art. Everything’s related to everything. People want to be seen as unique, as number one. Nobody takes anything away from you; on the contrary, they give to you through the diversity that’s there. It’s really hard to explain to you how I see things. There’s a brilliant quote by the great thinker Anthony de Mello, which says: “Nobody gets drunk on the word wine”.

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