Joaquín Grilo

"to feel a pinch on you while being in a show, it's the most important thing in flamenco, it's what we all are looking for" .

After more than five years of dancing with Paco de Lucía's ensemble, this bailaor from Jerez is now creating his own company. Grilo is currently the most important male dancer.

Being 31 years old, he says that he lives as a snail. Now, he is concentrated rehearsing a lot for the debut of his new show "Jácara', that has been staged for the first time at Logroño, 18th March 2000, and opened for the IV Festival de Jerez, the last day of April. Accompanying him are four bailaoras (Ana Romero, Begoña, Popi and Débora), three bailaores (Noel, Alfonso and Isaac de los Reyes), three guitarists (Alfredo Lago, from Jerez, "the one that has composed all this for me, my musical partner", Patino de Jerez and Paco Cruz), three cantaores (El Londro de Jerez, a cantaor still unknown, and his sister Mari Carmen Grilo) and two palmeros (Luis Peña and José Carlos).

- What is "Jácara" about?

I have based myself on the meaning of the word. I even searched in a musical dictionary for the different meanings that it could have, and I have found that it's signification is quite wide. Talking about the staging, one of its meanings is "music composed to dance and sing, people in the street making noise". The play it's not going to have a plot, but there will be some flamenco palos linked one with another with music, so it will have a meaning on stage and for the audience, it lets space open for the imagination. It has a complete musical structure. In eighty minutes we will reflect the seguiriya, the Huelva fandango, tango…

- How would you define your style, that special way of feeling the dance and the music?

It's difficult to define yourself, because you always have a lot of things going around in your head, and you're searching for a way of dance that is never really defined, because every year of your life has different cycles: it depends on your circumstances and feelings, that changes your way of performing. What I want to do now is a very musical show, I want the dance to be very close to the music, to that which we are hearing coming out of the guitars and the voices of the cantaores. And I'm not going to use any instrument other than the guitar, the voice, and the handclaps. That is, for me, the fundamental things, and that's what we all should be using, because we're saturating the flamenco with so many flutes, and violins, and percussion boxes... Those instruments can get you some very nice effects when you know how to use them, but everybody is using them in the same way and at the same time. So I think that maybe we should go a little back in time, with our modern knowledge and way of thinking, but always remembering that cante is exactly that: cante, and a guitar.

- It's a return to the roots.

Of course, that's what we all must really do. In a way. The flamenco professionals did mistakenly believe that because people as great as the master Paco de Lucía did use some other instruments to play flamenco, we all should do the same. But the masters had the ability and the knowledge to do that at the right moment and in the right way. Nowadays everybody is abusing of this new instruments, and everybody thinks that they have to play twenty thousand notes, when they should be searching for the essence, searching for the exact point, and using only the guitar, voice and handclaps, because that's what's really surprising now. The other thing is the usual.

- So, this work is in contrast with the work you did with Paco, isn't it?

Well, if I'm doing this show now, is because I've learned a lot in all this years that I've been next to the master, and he was precisely the one who said that we have to turn back, that the young artists shouldn't follow a mistaken way. The thing is, he is a soloist, he must perform a guitar show, and the guitar is very difficult, you can't allow yourself to get boring, so he developed a kind of show, that everybody has copied from him, in which there's a place for the percussion box and the saxophone. But the master has an essence, and he's sage enough as to explain all of this that I'm telling you. All this years that I've been with him have served me a lot, and have served me to go back.

- And you're still with him

Yes. The thing is that he wants a little break, because he is tired, a bit tired of so many compromises and so many music as he has done. He wants to stop for a while, because he needs the time to do a new record, so he won't be touring at least for the next year or year and a half. So, I want to make good use of this time and do this tings that I've been thinking of. In fact, I had thought about doing a different kind of show, but then this idea came along, and after so much talking about it, I wanted to do "Jácara'.

- This is the first time that you have your own company.

Yeah, my own company, and a stable one, that is. I was in Turkey and in Belgium, and I took with me three... that's not what I'm going to do now, this is a serious thing, with wardrobe, a full show. Rhythmically it's not going to be anything odd, but the word of the songs talk about different thing, they have a content.

- Can you defina yourself?

My style is flamenco, the most flamenco, I feel it, I live flamenco, I want to preserve the roots and the purity of flamenco until the day I die... always feeling it my own way, that changes as well as the stages of my life, I would define myself as a bailaor flamenco.

- You have become the prototype of men's dance, due to your way of finishing it, the way of moving your hands... How do you feel when there's talk about you and you're defined as the prototype of the male dancer?

I think that that's the way it really is. I understand this in a very natural way: all the male dancers should be the prototype of a male, a strong one; the word defines it quite right: man. Then, on your private life, you can do whatever you want. But on stage you have to give what is expected of you, and if you're a man, a male, you have to dance as such. There's no disguise allowed.

Even when there's talk about "gypsy dance" or "payo dance", you have defended a flamenco race.

That's right. I believe that flamenco is a race in which a lot of people are trying to fit: artists, fans, and critics. A lot of people that sometimes shake hands, some not, but that are fighting for an important and somehow forgetted culture named flamenco. Flamenco in itself is a race in which everybody can fit in; in fact, at this moment we're payos and gypsies, but, you see, the Japanese are reaching out for flamenco, and there're some Indians that like it as well, and French, and Italinas, and Germans, North Americans... they all are interested. The thing is, we can understand flamenco in a way that they can't understand it. By now. What's truth is that the gypsy one is a very interesting race, due to their skin, their sensibility, their way of express themselves, that natural born easyness to make any kind of music... but that's not a reason to say that flamenco is their's: flamenco is a race in itself.

- We can say that it was born in Andalucía, but it has reached far away lands.

That's right. What I want is respect for this people that enjoy and perform flamenco by heart outside Andalucía, because you can't play flamenco only with flamenco knowledge, you've got to have heart. Because flamenco is, most of all, a way of expression, the most beautiful way of expression born of the people. And it's so important than it can be expressed in Andalucía as well as in any other part of Spain or the world. The thing is, fortunately, Andalucía has the most and the best of the flamenco artists.

- You have defined flamenco dance as a 50 % of technics and a 50 % of inspiration.

Well, that's a way of telling it. The most perfect thing is to combine the inspiration with a depurated technique, because the technique is when you're preparing your body line for the dance. But if you're sitting down, the inspiration will never arrive. The technique must be depured with the rehearsal, and there's where the inspiration arrives, because you're so sure of yourself, you're so sure of wanting to go on stage, that the dance is your way of communicating with the audience, of expressing yourself. That's the method; otherways, it remains with you and with you alone.

- Farruco said that a bailaor shouldn't rehearse, though.

I'm not going to say neither that you have to rehearse nor that you don't, but Farruco used to put his boots on, didn`t he? He also was young, and he did study with other people, and he did rehearse. That's not a thing that comes from nowhere. I know what he meant when he said that, because Farruco is one of the most important flamenco bailaores, but let's not deceive ourselves: the skin of the boots, the cabretilla, has to fit your feet. And you can only manage that by putting them on, at least one hour a day, practising, even walking around your own home. And then there's another thing: you have to feel flamenco, because there's a lot of people that kill themselves studying, but they will never dance flamenco. Because thay need to live to get the inspiration. With the technique you can search for the inspiration. It's possible that it will never arrive, but you have to search for it, anyway.

- If you don't search for it, it's difficult to think that it will arrive…

Of course. And how do you search for it? Well, dancing and dancing and dancing until it arrives. And dancing on stage, because an artist makes himself an artist on a stage. At the studio everything it's easier. The compromise arrives when the lights go off behind your back, and the people is watching for you, intensely, in that moment you're all alone face to face with the bull, the audience in this case, and they're ready to feel what you're willing to give them.

- That's why you want to get back to the roots, because flamenco is at his commercial peak?

Yeah, sure. We have to get the best of this moment, and show that flamenco is stronger yet, and broaden it even more, we've got to colonize new lands. First, we trap them. The foreigner, when he arrives to Andalucía, gets trapped by the weather, by our way of living, of eating, of receiving people, they get to know the purest flamenco and then they say "this is it!" Because flamenco is really as a religion. But being something so natural for us, we see this attitude in them as something too pompous.

- In that kind of flamenco mystical theology there are a lot of religious concepts.

Yeah, but I like the Japanese because they're so respectful, they're battling with the whole world due to their shyness or due to the troubles they had with the americans and all of that... since then, they're fighting culturally with the other countries, and for me they are the first superpower assuming other people cultures. They're the most cautious and the ones who better pay for flamenco. One of the times that I was in Japan I lived there for eight months, and if you get to know how they think, it suits you as something really, really odd that they should leave their world to come to ours. They go away of a country that's twelve thousand kilometers away and they come to our country to spend all they've got, because they give all they have for flamenco, to get... maybe nothing, because who knows if they really manage to understand it or not. Japan is giving us a lot of space. And they're providing a lot of chips and beans.

- When did you go first to Madrid?

Well, when I started working for Rafael Aguilar I came to Madrid, and here I began to dance for Luisillo, Lola Flores, La Tati, Vicente Amigo called me… and there went a little boom with all of the five bailaores that were there: two years before the closing of the Zambra, there were Antonio Canales, Joaquín Cortés, Javier Latorre, Adrián Galia and myself.

- That would be around 1989-90, but you had won a TV contest before that, didn't you?

Yes, it was in 1987, the last "Gente Joven" contest.

- You were touring with Vicente Amigo in 1991, when he was presenting his first record.

Among the youngest, Vicente Amigo is the master, he is above them all. He's got a gift to write the words for the songs and to produce for cantaores, but a guitarist proves himself when he's accompanying the cante, which is the base; if you know it, you can step over it, and chew it, because you have the knowledge. That's the first thing you have to have, the knowledge, even as a fan.

- You teamed up with Joaquín Cortés in 1993, with "Cibayí'.

It was a nice experience, very interesting, and it served me a lot to be more widely known. Joaquín lives flamenco in his own way, but for me he has always been a great dancer. We've got to thank him for being one of the first ones, when there were not a single company, everything was flat and he opened a lot of doors for the dance, also outside Spain. He knows how to do thinks with head and sense.

- You've been with Paco since 1994, you know him quite well.

Well, I'd like to know him even better, because the master has an ability and an aura that makes him a very special man. I've been with him for six years now, but everyday seems like the first one, It's just like when you have a girlfriend with whom you're really, really in love. It doesn't matter how many years you've been with her, every day is still like the first one. There's great harmony and a great friendship between us. When he speaks, I listen to him closely, he has a very special way of living; in fact, we're talking about the musician of the century. To live with such a person as Paco is a marvel. Out of this world.

- In Saura's film, "Flamenco ", you did improvise something with Belén Maya.

Yes, they told me about it when we were already at the studio. There were Tomate, Duquende, Potito… and there I talked with Belén, rehearsed a bit, then we recorded a rhythmic structure and three days after that we shooted the scene.

- Are there few flamenco choreographers?

It's difficult, because to do a flamenco choreography you must be flamenco, otherwise that what you're doing is not what it should be. Lately, I've seen some shows that somehow have turned me down, and I'm talking about choreography and staging, because they should have searched for flamenco performers. There are some choreographers, but there aren't flamenco artists. The dancers are classical dancers, not bailaores. If they do handclaps on stage, they hand clap three times and it feels like if they'd be slapping you.

Luis Clemente.