Eva Yerbabuena, bailaora. Interview

“A poem can be pure dance”

Silvia Calado. Seville, September 2004
Translation: Joseph Kopec
Photos: Daniel Muñoz

“I think a poet dreams of seeing his verses sketched out on a human body and a bailaor dreams of seeing his dancing in a poem”. This thought is what has driven Eva Yerbabuena to create her company's fourth show, ‘A cuatro voces’ (‘In Four Voices’). For the time being, she only wants it to be known that “it's a show inspired by four poets”: Vicente Aleixandre, Miguel Hernández, Lorca and Blas de Otero. Guided by the images that both their verses and their biographies have suggested to her, she has been working for months on making this show materialize in which she débuts as stage director. There is already a feeling that Eva Yerbabuena is again going to mark the difference... as the rehearsals show. She has tried to soak up all the members of the group in the show's leit motif. And in her backroom people read as much as they dance.

It must be hard to make everyone take part in the idea you want to capture...

It's not easy, but then it has its rewards, when you go on working and you see the fruit of it. We're really involved, tremendously excited. And I almost think I wasn't before. It might be because it's the first time I've dared to do the stage directing. Before this I had someone by my side -Hansel Cereza- who worried about that job. I observed his work, but it's not the same as when you take on that responsibility.

	Eva Yerbabuena

How did you decide to take that step?

I've pictured this show quite clearly in my head from the very beginning. I started reading their biographies and poems and I said “I want this, this and this”.

How did the inspiration work? Did images start coming to mind?

Images and... there were also a lot of coincidences. You get images from a single poem of theirs, but when you get back to the books and keep on reading more poems, they speak at the same time of those images that you've had. It's a heavy experience.

Vicente Aleixandre, Miguel Hernández, Lorca and Blas de Otero. Why did you choose these poets?

I had the opportunity to get to know Miguel Hernández's poetry when I was about sixteen years old. Paco Moyano came to Granada and told me he'd done a show called ‘Ausencias’ (‘Absences’) which was about the life of Miguel Hernández. And he wanted me to play the role of Josefina (the poet's girlfriend). He's gotten to me since I was a little girl; he gave me food for thought and he even gave me the chance to feel somewhat fulfilled by telling his experiences. The truth is that he's a very special person to me, besides the fact that everything that happened to him and what he wrote seem very deep to me. Lorca is the closest personage as he's from Granada. He's been present in me since my schooldays due to the very fact of being from there. And obviously, he's the one most sung in flamenco. The one least sung might be Vicente Aleixandre, since he's so special...

And Blas de Otero is the one never sung, isn't he?

There are things I've read by him and my God...

It's eye-catching that you've chosen him. The Generation of '27 has always been close to flamenco, but this poet...

I love him. Besides, I think he's a very individual person. He had such an impact on me, that he's the one whose biography I've read the least of. I love his poems. I could never have explained better than Blas Otero what you feel up on stage.

Do you read poetry regularly?

I haven't for long. I started to read a little before the last Bienal. And I've plunged into it for over a year, trying to soak myself up in their anecdotes, poems, verses.

And you felt like writing?

	"I always like to carry my little notebook around with me and jot down the things that I think of"

For some time now. I always like to carry my little notebook around with me and jot down the things that I think of. I'm not going to devote myself to that at all, but I do like to capture what I feel or what I think. Afterwards, you feel really good. There are times that you don't even know what you're writing, but oh well. I think a poet dreams of seeing his verses sketched out on a human body and a bailaor dreams of seeing his dancing in a poem. And I think that's very important and it's something that if you can manage to achieve, is wonderful. Sometimes you want to sketch something in the air, but what do you sketch? And you can sketch a poem perfectly; and a poem can be pure dance.

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