María del Mar Moreno, bailaora. Interview

"Flamenco dance is evolving in terms of form,
but not in terms of the foundations"

Silvia Calado. Jerez, April 2004
Translation: Gary Cook
Photos: Daniel Muñoz

'Lágrimas Negras' and the warm Spring daylight provide a fitting atmosphere in the café of Teatro Villamarta. The bustling activity of teachers and students attending short courses as part of the 2004 Festival de Jerez stops for a breath of air around midday. And before she starts her class, María del Mar Moreno puts a little time aside for an interview that promises to cleanse the spirit. 'Septiembre' marked a turning point in her career... and in her life. Now more than ever she's sure of who she wants to be, both as an artist and as a person: above all, someone more concerned with the foundations than she is with form. María talks of respect, of camaraderie, of emotion, of existentialism. Her every word brims over with sincerity. She's still unaware that she'll bring her audience to their feet during the tribute show which closes the festival in her home town... for more than thirty seconds.

María del Mar Moreno

You return to Teatro Villamarta, this time as the key figure in a tribute to Angelita Gómez. What role did the teacher play in your career?

I'm more grateful every day that I began my flamenco career under her wing. She not only taught me what the flamenco scene really is like, but also, being the serious and respectful person she is, she gave me self-discipline as a person. My personal relationship with her grows more and more sincere and truthful. Tomorrow I don't know if I'll dance well or not, but today during rehearsal I got really emotional... it's something really special. I wasn't planning on coming to Teatro Villamarta this year, after I premièred 'Septiembre' at last year's festival, with all the effort it took to put on a self-produced theater production with scant resources and no help. I didn't have the economic resources or time on my hands to do what I wanted. I came here to give my two courses - I love teaching classes, I think I have a good teaching vocation. But when the tribute was suggested I wanted to be part of it.

How did you evolve after your period of apprenticeship with Angelita Gómez?

Everyone has to have an academic and spiritual guide, and for me Angelita strengthened many qualities I had since I was little. My parents are true flamenco fans; I'd sing and dance flamenco without any kind of academic instruction, I was wild. She tamed me, made me civilized, and taught me the most important principles for understanding this genre: respect for cante and respect for the guitar, for palmas, for your contemporaries, a respect for this whole artform. Now that I'm older it's what I value most. And besides that, technically she laid the foundations which are unshakeable. Rather than letting that firm base evolve, I've matured and learned from my colleagues and from my experiences with them - people like Joaquín Grilo, Antonio el Pipa, legends like Paco Cepero, Manuel Morao, great cantaores like El Torta, Manuel Moneo, Juana la del Pipa, and leading figures of flamenco dance like Mario Maya, Matilde Coral and Rafael el Negro. And the companions I chose in my life too: Antonio Malena, Luis Moneo, Luis de Pacote, Domingo Rubichi, my brother Santiago, Luis de la Tota, bailaores like Juan Ogalla, Andrés Peña, María Bermúdez... I draw strength from all the people I have around me, and that's what spurs me on. The classroom isn't the only place you learn, you learn from talking, from listening. And I still have plenty to learn...

Is the rapport among the members of your company really as good as it looks from the outside?

When you're on stage you have to cast everything else aside and be professional, but my greatest pride in life is that we're one big family. And just like any other family, one day we're hugging each other and the next we're at each other's throats, that's what's most striking about it. Apart from that I admire and respect each and every one of them for the great artists they are. The most difficult thing of all is the human relations, and if I managed to put together a group who share my love for the artform, my flair, my curiosities, my feelings and my view of flamenco, I think I can count myself lucky. And it shows on stage. You experience the same nerves, but if the show's a success, that success feels even more of a triumph; and if things go wrong, you don't feel so bad.

Can you describe the relationship between your dance and cante.

	"I'd like to have been a cantaora"

I'd like to have been a cantaora, that love of singing is something that shows. I identify more with lyrics and musicality than I do with movement. I mean I love dancing and I need to dance, that's my vehicle of expression... so long as it's dancing to cante. To reach my real inner self I need to hear vocals by Antonio de la Malena or Luis Moneo. I'm so lucky, I don't say this just because they're my colleagues, but I work with vocalists who are neither 'cantaores de atrás' nor the type that have to always be out in the spotlight - they're just Cantaores with a capital C. The people I work with are all great solo performers in their own right. And that's unusual. We're a team and at the same time very much individualists - in the good sense of the word, that is. When I dance, when I perform a soleá or a seguiriya, of course we have a structure drawn up for the dancing, we wouldn't just let ourselves run wild. But it's true that there's about seventy percent improvisation and thirty percent choreography, sure. Sometimes I drive them nuts, I make them rehearse four bars for two whole weeks and then I go berserk. That's no virtue; it's a fault of mine. When I'm done it was probably amazing, but they're ready to kill me. "You left out two whole bars... you left the cantaor stranded in mid-verse... I had to do it again because you rounded off the phrase where you shouldn't." But that's the way things are and that's where their flair as solo performers shines through, because they have to get themselves out of a corner when I need them to do something. And the same's true of the guitar. That's where the magic of this artform comes in.

María del Mar Moreno

And that isn't something you find every day...

	"When I dance, there's about seventy percent improvisation and thirty percent choreography"

What's happening is that while we're seeing a marked evolution in terms of form, the foundations aren't moving. I completely agree that everyone has to find their way to evolve, just like they do in literature, the theater and all of the arts. Each of us has a 'modus vivendi' and a 'modus operandi', a way of feeling and a way of life that reflects their 'arte'. We worry a lot about good technique as a goal: if we can cram in a greater number of complex movements, if in ten seconds I do more syncopated movements or more pirouettes... I see an incredible evolution in terms of formal, tangible aspects, but I don't see any evolution in terms of what is intangible. That needs evolution right from the foundations - I mean what can I do so that the person watching me dance is overawed without hardly moving a finger. And that runs in parallel with what's happening in real life, in our society, that we concentrate more on external aspects than internal. It's all about consumerism, marketing, the product. Before you even try the product you say it's good. And the audience fits that mould. It's a wheel that keeps turning, and there's no use in pointing the finger. We're all inside that wheel. From my philosophical viewpoint, I see the world as Heraclitus or Parmenides, as a circle: the audience demands what they get given, and the artist does what's demanded of him. We're all part of this maelstrom. I'll give you an example from outside of flamenco: the movie 'Lost in Translation'. I saw it and I thought it was amazing. I asked everyone and they all said the same - it was slow-moving, it was weird... And yet all of them liked 'The Last Samurai'. I realized they didn't like it because they don't want to think, because thinking requires a big effort. Maybe when you look deep inside you don't like what you see. It hurts to look at yourself. I go in search of truth... and I find myself at a moment of existential crisis that I don't know when I'll be able to snap out of.

next >>