María Pagés, bailaora and choreographer. Interview

MARÍA PAGÉS, BAILAORA AND CHOREOGRAPHER. INTERVIEW

“Flamenco is curved, like life”

Silvia Calado. Madrid, December 2011

Although her company has been together for over twenty years now, María Pagés affirms that they never run out of ideas. ‘Utopía’ arose from the concern “to vindicate the Utopian nature of human beings” and from the inspiration she got from getting to know Óscar Niemeyer as an artist and as a person. The show, which is already on a tour of Spain and will soon be seen at theaters all over the world, uses concepts, poems and architectural forms which inspire the choreography, stage design, music and even the wardrobe. And among all the possible shapes, the curve is what prevails over the rest since, as the Sevillian bailaora states, “flamenco is curved, like life. A perfectly straight line doesn’t exist”.

‘Utopía’ stems from a need to vindicate the ethics of these times we’re living in. It’s a response to the social situation, wondering what we’re doing wrong. Each person does his own thing and I think it’s time to value ethics more than esthetics. The same thing happened to me with ‘Canciones, antes de una guerra’. Something had to be said. And it coincides with my personal discovery of Óscar Niemeyer, who is an example, at his 104 years of age, of coherence in his life, of faithfulness to his ideas, of social commitment… with clear, essential ethical principles.

When I started to get to know Óscar Niemeyer, I understood that he was the ideal element as part of the inspiration for all that concern I had and for this show I was determined to put together. You don’t know what you’re going to do, but you do have that intuition. And what I had to do was something to vindicate the Utopian nature of human beings. By nature, we all want to live better, to be better; we aspire to a better world. That’s so even at the most disastrous moments. And we keep going thanks to that. And I like the word Utopia. Although it carries with it a certain amount of disappointment, it makes you aspire to something. I don’t see it as something unattainable, since I think that to reach things, the first thing is to aspire to them. That’s what I understand as Utopia; that aspiration. In time, it’s become surrounded with that patina of disappointment. No, I think that to get there, you have to aspire and be excited and have faith and believe in that.

I enjoy the moments of getting something ready more and more. I think I’m going to give myself more time to create because of that enjoyment I have in discovering and continuing to learn. I wanted to speak about solidarity, exile, people living as refugees. And then I use artists who I’ve discovered, poets... I found that poem by Mario Benedetti about solidarity, I looked in ‘El Quijote’, which is the most Utopian of all, and in Neruda and in Baudelaire, whose poem ‘Elevación’ is the alegría at the end.

Putting together the stage design was a real challenge. Although there are real philosophical and moral contents, Niemeyer was an important part of that inspiration. What stage design do you do when it all comes from one of the most important architects in history? He did one stage design, but it was too bulky. Then Jair Varela, his right-hand man, talked to him about it, but we couldn’t find the key. Until one day I started to step back from very impressive things and started destructuring. There are three curved strokes, like when you begin a design. Niemeyer does very simple strokes and a macro-building comes out of that. The stage design is based on that elementary aspect. They’re lines which aren’t hanging there cut off from what’s going on.

Of course. Not only is there an influence, but also a way of connecting. I think flamenco is curved in itself. Life is curved. A perfectly straight line doesn’t exist. What we live is never a straight road; there are always states of mind, we’re not always the same, our behavior changes, as do our miseries, our grandeurs... And flamenco is curved. Your voice isn’t always the same, nor is your body motion. Flamenco doesn’t always stay the same.

The choreography distinguishes a lot between solos and group pieces, doesn’t it?

I wanted it to be very structured as far as differentiating the solos and the group baile. The dance corps are the people, the opening outwards. There’s a differentiation between the individual world and the outside world, what we all are, humanity and its coexistence, what life is. The solos are more symbolic, but what holds it all together is the movement of all those people, of what we are in the world.

The farruca was a stroke. To me, it’s a stroke at the visual level and a dialogue at the symbolic level. Each song has its visual, sound, philosophical contents. I found it natural for it to be the simplest. It always goes against the light so that it’s like a stroke on paper, which is the cyclorama. And the dialogue is the beginning of human coexistence. That’s why the cello begins, but the guitar is also there. Flamenco can dialogue with anything that exists. Flamenco’s openness is a fact.

But the center of the show is the solo in the red dress, the one on the bill…

‘Conciencia y deseo’ is a poem which you have to delve into. It’s by a Moroccan poet, Larbi el Harti, who writes in Spanish and that gives it a different nature. And it represents the idea of the inner world really well, of talking about oneself from within. I had that sensation when I went into Niemeyer’s domes. I didn’t get the sensation of stress, but of going into oneself. I started seeking poems and I situated it. When I got down to working on the music with Rubén Lebaniegos, who is another collaborator I get along with really well, we saw this poem and I thought of the granaína because Ana sings it really well; it’s the cante I most like to hear her sing. And I feel it so close to myself, as if I were singing it to myself. It’s like my voice at that moment.

The dress was a real challenge. I thought I wanted a long dress, but not for it to be a bata de cola, but rather for the fabric to spread out and for it to be huge, for it to drag around everywhere. And for it to be like a drop of blood falling from above and for it to have that intensity and to unite us. The work of adding music to that poem with Ana and Rubén and doing the choreography with that dress was a process of comings and goings, of ups and downs. Logically, my natural way of dancing is in shoes, but when I saw what a mess that would be, I took them off and that was that. I had already considered doing something barefoot in ‘Dunas’ with Sidi, but he told me no, that he wanted to dance like me. And we rejected the idea. Due to principles of ours, he drew up closer to my world than I did to his. I didn’t need them here and it just happened. And it all takes place in that whole which envelops you, within yourself.

He’s another poet who’s always there… I don’t know any more if it’s because I want him always to be like somewhat mine. I admire him so much for that way of being Sevillian, with openness and self-criticism. And I discovered that Niemeyer also admires him hugely. And I thought of that red road for the piece, on those ramps he makes. He uses white a lot, but he cuts it with a burst of basic color. That’s why the colors in ‘Utopía’ are the ones they are. Gray as material, as reinforced concrete, as the base of building things. Then white to cover it, the pure color. From nothing you reach black, which is where all the colors are accumulated. And red, aside from symbolism and the colors he uses, is the one I like most. Those ramps are curved like that, like the roads in life and in several works of his they’re totally red.

Yes, the alegrías in the bata de cola stem from a poem by Baudelaire. When I read it, I saw alegrías. It’s being able to say: let’s go towards another dimension. And I thought of those alegrías from Córdoba, also because Ana’s from there and she sings them in a really special way. The bata de cola comes from a staircase by Niemeyer. I saw that spiral staircase and I saw a bata de cola, specifically, a pleated one, as if consisting of stairs. The bata de cola is a work of architecture. Then there are all of the strokes by him, the cosmos… One thing I love is that now, at his age, he’s studying Astronomy; he has a teacher and all the questions and curiosities he has are taken care of by him.

And in the connection with Niemeyer, there’s a musical reference to Brazil…

I wanted to have some connection and for it to be something natural. He wrote a samba which we do here por tangos; it’s called ‘Tranquilo con la vida’. The lyrics are very Utopian, he wrote them at the age of nearly 100 in a hospital when they thought he wasn’t going to keep going. I met Fred Martins through other musician friends in Brazil and he’s a great singer-songwriter, a person who has joined in really well: he does the first song, which is entitled ‘Utopía’ and is a sort of prologue.

Translating other types of music to flamenco is now a trademark of the company’s, isn’t it?

Well, it’s something almost natural. And it’s always been natural, even if we don’t recognize it. The guajiras don’t come from the cellar in Triana; they’re now adopted as something of ours.

After celebrating the company’s twentieth anniversary with ‘Mirada’, how do you weigh things up, broadly speaking?

This is a staircase you climb step by step. The time will come when you won’t want to keep on climbing those stairs… but I’m continuing for the time being. And that’s been the company. I started from the bottom and we’ve climbed steps, we’ve learnt, we’ve gained experience, the team has gotten stronger, has transformed. I believe in the sense of the company because I’ve always believed, I’ve always applied it. I don’t believe in momentary productions. I think that in order to do things, you have to have a team and a team isn’t put together overnight, if it’s a creative team and not just one that executes. I always say the same thing, that we’re at our best moment. Fortunately, we continue to have opportunities, projects, tours… Despite the difficulties, which are there and they have to be overcome, we have to be ready. And we continue to work well.

It’s not a momentary matter; we’re always finishing one thing and starting another. There’s that continuity with a team of people and with ideas and how the work is laid out. And that makes it possible for you to keep your repertoire alive. There are places where everything has already been to, places with a shorter frequency, places like Moscow’s Chejov Festival, where it is now considered a company that goes there regularly and they take part in the productions, like in Lyon. And here at the Teatro Español there’s like a sort of tradition; that continuity is being generated. ‘Utopía’ will also go to Tokyo and Singapore in 2013. And of course, we’re getting ready for Seville’s Bienal, Festival de Jerez, Granada’s International Festival…

And is it hard to reinvent yourself at this stage of the game when you face new creations?

Luckily, I always have a lot of ideas. The problem is choosing the right one. The choice depends on your own personal moment, the situation surrounding you, the encounters you have. I’m always taking notes, writing, watching… I’m like that and I think I’ll be like that all my life. The key lies in “the” idea. And when you decide on it you’ve had to receive many pieces of information so that you understand that it’s the idea. Your own intuition makes you understand that it’s the one. It’s a great responsibility at that moment. I don’t know anything about what I’m going to do, but I know I’m going to do it.