FESTIVAL DE JEREZ 2009. ABOUT ‘LLUVIA’ BY EVA
YERBABUENA
Eva Yerbabuena, flamenco bailaora. Interview
“I want to get to know
myself”
Silvia Calado. Madrid, February 2009
Translation: Joseph Kopec
All
about Festival de Jerez 2009
Eva Yerbabuena has been saying
it for a decade in bits and pieces. Melancholy has been
appearing in certain passages in her shows. “And I
decided not to use it little by little, but to the max and
with as much as I need”, the Granada-born bailaora
and choreographer admits. The result of that immersion in
sensations such as solitude, grief and lack of communication
is ‘Lluvia’, a show whose premiere inaugurates
Festival de Jerez 2009 and which is inspired by a verse
which leaves you speechless: “Silence hurts when it’s
pure”.
Before it was called ‘Lluvia’
(‘Rain’), it was called ‘Soledades’
(‘Solitudes’). And the thing is, as Eva Yerbabuena
recalls, “it began to be created with me alone because
I felt like being alone”. However, the idea progressed
and with it, the structure of the show: “As the ideas
and concepts started to become defined, we decided that
I needed to be surrounded by three voices, two guitars and
two percussionists, besides a dance corps of four people;
two women and two men”. With all of them, who are
part of her usual team, she reveals that part of her personality
which she has had to conceal on occasion: “You see
from afar that people comment on how sad and how serious
you are. You might try for how much you admire melancholy
not to be seen or you try to somehow conceal that it’s
the feeding point you start off from”. But there came
a time when she refused to go on covering it up: “After
a ten-year career I said no, that this had to come out”.
Thus out in the open, Eva Yerbabuena states
that “my starting point in ‘Lluvia’ is
pure melancholy”. And the cause of inspiration, a
poem by Horacio García, who had already authored
the lyrics to ‘A
cuatro voces’. The verse in question begins like
this: “Silence hurts when it’s pure”.
And according to the bailaora, that “first phrase
is essential in the show”. She moreover believes that
“the poem itself is intense when you read it. Everyone
who’s read it doesn’t speak at first... there’s
silence”. Which leads to one of the show’s fundamental
concepts: lack of communication.
Fitting in with that point is the popular
saying “out of sight, out of mind”, which I’ve
never agreed with. And to corroborate it, Eva Yerbabuena
has tested her sense of intuition. As fieldwork, “I
went to see how people lived melancholy who were missing
some sense, such as the deaf, the blind... I made an initial
visit to the ONCE (Spanish National Organization for the
Blind), where the first contact I had was with children.
I observed that it was just the opposite to what I’d
expected, since the children are completely happy; I think
we grown-ups have the problem”. Moreover, “I
called a sign language teacher and we worked with him, since
one choreography is dedicated to deaf people”.
| |
“It’s
all new; there isn’t any baile which has been
seen before, nor any music which has been heard before” |
| |
Both that piece and all the rest making
up the show’s repertoire are premiering: “It’s
all new; there isn’t any baile which has been seen
before, nor any music which has been heard before”.
Regarding the music, of course, it’s an aspect which
Paco
Jarana takes care of. And the bailaora informs that
“he still has his trademark, as does my choreography,
but there is something different; both of us have noticed
it... and we’re really happy”. Moreover, she
points out that “both Paco and the team I have around
me have understood it perfectly, and besides, they feel
like it”. Which includes the cantaores, who there
will be three of at the premiere at the Teatro Villamarta
in Jerez on February 27th (Enrique Soto, Pepe de Pura and
Jeromo Segura) and one more (José Valencia) when
the company makes a stop at the Teatro Español in
Madrid from March 5th to 15th. And their role will not be
as complicated here as in previous shows. “The cantaores
are there like saying I wonder what Eva’s going to
ask me for now, but there isn’t that fear of them
having to move around on stage”... or singing from
amidst the audience, as in ‘Santo y seña’.
What she requires of them is for them to help her to make
“the dream come true of achieving touching moments
of great subtlety, intense moments”.
The channel is going to be flamenco, taking
on different forms. Eva Yerbabuena specifies them like this:
“The first number is a fantasy by Paco Jarana, a lovely
tremolo which he’s done; there’s a bulería
which is a transition between the first number and the murciana,
taranta and levantica they sing for me; there’s a
tanguillo de Cádiz, alegrías, soleá
and it ends with a cuplé”.
-Soleá? The soleá?
-Yes. But it’s a different soleá;
it doesn’t have anything to do with either that first
one I’m always asked for, nor with the one in ‘El
huso de la memoria’.
-Considering it’s a show
about melancholy, isn’t it contradictory for there
to be styles such as the tanguillo?
-It isn’t a show where you see
everything through rose-colored glasses; there are harsh
moments. But, as it happens in our everyday life, they’re
wrapped up: I put on make up, get dressed up and wear a
smile.
| |
“I’d
like to make the dream come true of achieving touching
moments of great subtlety, intense moments” |
| |
She says she learned that from his visits
to the ONCE, where she saw from another perspective how
people face weeping or laughter which, unlike smiling, aren’t
learned but rather are natural. They’re thoughts running
through each number, named with titles as poetic as ‘El
sinfín de la vida’, ‘Peldaño’,
‘Soledades’, ‘Palabras rotas’, ‘Lluvia
de sal’, ‘Barro’... Together, they give
rise to “a show with intense emotionality; the thing
is that there are numbers in which you laugh at your own
misfortunes like in the tanguillos”.
... and like in the day-to-day life of
every human. That is why the stage design created by Vicente
Palacio is made of “very everyday things; what’s
seen is a door, a street, a table... a shower of objects
which we can all identify”. All of it is set in “a
corner where the melancholy could be sensed and I think
it’s there”, she affirms.
... and like in flamenco, which seems to
be more and more of “a pure contradiction” to
Eva Yerbabuena. She comments that “sometimes you say
no, not something sad; I’m going to dance alegrías.
But if you listen to the lyrics well, the contents of the
lyrics are just the opposite; it’s all very deep,
very sad. And from what I’ve been able to identify
in the years I’ve been getting to know flamenco or
in the source which I’ve drawn on, there’s a
very high percentage in a lack of affection, in solitude”.
And that’s what she has decided to tell in ‘Lluvia’,
since it is “what motivates me the most, what makes
me feel the most”.
| |
“From
what I’ve been able to identify in flamenco,
there’s a very high percentage in a lack of
affection, in solitude” |
| |
But she knows that it involves risk, all
the more when she takes on the responsibility of directing.
“I know there are people who think I need someone
to direct me, but I want to get to know myself. It isn’t
that I don’t with a director, but I don’t think
the time has come yet. But (she recalls) I’ve worked
on two occasions with a stage director: Hansel Cereza”.
She has projects at the back of her mind such as, “for
example, I’ve still never done a classic and when
the time comes to do it, I want to have enough experience
so as to maintain a conversation where there isn’t
any disagreement, where both the stage director and I are
as one. And I’m working on it”.
But above all, she’s working on ‘Lluvia’.
When this conversation was held in a corridor of the Teatro
de la Zarzuela in Madrid, she was one month away from the
premiere and she was already donning an unconcealable smile
of satisfaction: “What’s missing now is the
most important part: it’s tacked and now it has to
be run through the machine, for the seams to be well sewn”.
Something which is going to be craftsman’s work, since
she set herself the challenge “for there not to be
any lulls in this show, for it to be one thing after another
and it’s being achieved”.
One has the sensation that right now, Eva
Yerbabuena knows no bounds. Last summer, she celebrated
her company’s tenth
anniversary at La Alhambra in Granada. And she feels
that decade “has helped me to get to know myself better,
still much better. After all these years you realize that
what you want to do with baile is express yourself. Even
if you don’t do something thinking about it, there’s
always a little percentage which expresses what you want
to do or not, how you want to do it or not, what moves you,
what disturbs you. There’ll always be someone who
doesn’t agree, who doesn’t like it, but that’s
exactly what it’s all about. Routine and everything
the same, is boring”. She therefore always wants to
give the audience the same freedom she asks for herself:
“I don’t want to give beforehand what I feel
or what I think. What I like is for each person to sit down
in the crowd and be free to think and feel what he or she
wants”.
Further
information
All
about Festival de Jerez 2009: program, ticket
sales, news, about the shows, courses, archive...
Interview
with Eva Yerbabuena, flamenco dancer
Festival
de Jerez 2008. Eva Yerbabuena, ‘Santo
y seña’. Review,
photos & online video
Festival
de Jerez 2007. Eva Yerbabuena, ‘El huso
de la memoria’. Review,
photos & online video
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