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Joaquín Grilo, teaching |
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The fact that a bailaor takes on the role of choreographer opens a dilemma
that Grilo describes in terms of availability or lack of resources, though he
acknowledges that not every dancer is necessarily ready to assume that role. "We
need a lot of things, mostly money. It would be the biggest thrill of my life
if Antonio Gades were to choreograph a show for me. But how do you go about getting
that? The first thing you need is to know him really well, go out and paint the
town red with him, make a special contact, get someone to back your project…
And since that's impossible you have to just make do with what you have, simple
as that. It's great to try to do just a little more, even if you screw up. If
not you'd just be dancing like you always have, but that's passé. You dance
por alegrías, soleá and seguiriyas, and that's it. All you need
is a cantaor and a guitarist. But if you want to do other stuff, if you want to
build on your own ideas, you have to make a lot of mistakes before things come
out looking all right."
And this continuous personal dilemma seems to make achievement of specific
goals almost impossible… even the goal of maturity. "You never stop
learning. Little by little you seem to be learning more because you feel secure
at certain moments, but you soon realize you know less than you did. It's weird,
it's like a labyrinth. When you feel you're lost you ask yourself 'now what?'
I think flamenco, music and even life in general work like that. But that's why
we struggle on. I think the most important thing to fight for is maturity as a
person, not as an artist. You have to struggle to be a good person, to enjoy yourself…
because really you're life is over in a flash. Otherwise look what happens, look
at Manolito Soler, look at Quique Paredes... People get lost. Then what? You have
to know how to eat, drink, love… you have to learn all kinds of stuff, and
little by little you mature. But you never fully mature. By the time you're old
and you know, more or less, what it's all about, you're confined to a wheelchair."
The botanical gardens
Better to concentrate on the present, on now… Joaquín Grilo has
a deservedly high standing on the flamenco dance scene at the start of this century
and millennium. A glance around shows abundant quality, advances in technical
ability and the wide variety of productions on offer, but there's still room for
criticism too… and self-criticism. "I think flamenco dance is riding
a wave now, there are amazing people out there. There's a much wider range of
techniques and a much deeper knowledge than before, but I think we should start
taking a little more interest in the music - above all in cante, since vocals
are the most important ingredient of flamenco. It seems like it's become a little
neglected, we don't listen to the lyrics, we don't know how to coordinate our
dance with the vocalist's performance, and we try to squeeze too many things in,
when one simple movement can say a lot more. That's where the difficulty lies.
I think we're going backward in a sense… backward or forward because it's
like this (he sketches a circle in the air), we're reaching a point where
people are going to do it more. There are incredible musicians out there. And
dancers too! The best thing to do is lean toward simplicity, that's the hardest
thing of all. You can see it when you give courses. You give the students a complex
step and they get it right; but ask them to follow slow movements and nobody knows.
I don't understand it. Simplicity is where things get tricky, because the other
stuff is just a matter of dedication, everyone learns it." And he adds that
"everyone can do it so long as it's dancing with guitar accompaniment. Not
with cante though, the Germans and Japanese might like to think they can... You
have to be born with the instrument inside you, and with the language and the
culture, everything. That's something just for us, the ones who come from the
heartland. And even then we know you have to be born with a gift, with very special
qualities. To be a cantaor you have to be touched by a magic wand, if not you
can forget it."
Joaquín Grilo
As an epilog to this analysis of the situation, Joaquín Grilo adds that
the closeness is also lacking nowadays. "Young people on the flamenco scene
don't get together like the old folk. Before there was no technology, the only
way to learn was to pass things on face to face. And now everybody ought to do
more things together, but something happened, I don't know what. Musicians almost
turn their backs… we have to share flamenco. We have to learn from others,
it's not going to influence you. I always say that in flamenco nobody's better
or worse, we're just all different. It's like flamenco was this garden (a lush
botanical gardens in the French city of Mont de Marsan) and you go this way
and I go that… but we're going the same place."
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