Merche Esmeralda, bailaora. Flamenco interview

“People who dance old-style have merit, but those who
dance old-fashioned don’t, since they’re out-dated”

Silvia Calado. Madrid, March 2006

Merche Esmeralda comes back to stages. And she returns free of all pressure, with the ease that comes with not setting any aims other than enjoying dancing for the sake of dancing. The Sevillian bailaora is aware of the difference between old-style and old-fashioned, scarcely a nuance marking the validity of a personal way of understanding baile. Her participation in the gala premiering at Flamenco Festival USA and Flamenco Festival London, together with Manolo Marín, Rafael Campallo, Adela Campallo and Javier Barón, has given enthusiasts back one of the greats of flamenco dancing... and in all her prime, both in the sober role of the soleá in a bata de cola, and in the expressive role of baile through tangos. Though she had never deprived flamenco of her mastery, now her reflections, her memories and her advice take on new life.

Matilde Coral commented that in your performance at Festival de Jerez you were “in a state of grace”. Did you feel it was a special night?

	Merche Esmeralda (Photo: Daniel Muñoz)

What’s happening to me now is that I’m doing things without anguish, without pressure, more for personal enjoyment. And I make that enjoyment reach others. I don’t know if that’s a state of grace, but it’s certainly a state of peace. It’s different to when you want to carry out a project, be successful, go on fighting... Since I retired, due to certain things that happened to me, my life’s been dancing. And I’ve realized that from time to time I need for that built-up inner energy to come out. I want to dance in a more mellow way, more for enjoyment, to do what I’ve always liked doing: dancing for the sake of dancing. And that might be a state of grace. Now I’m enjoying things another way. I used to dance under pressure and now what I do is dance and feel at ease. And that, believe it or not, reaches people; it’s a question of energy.

In that gala you contrast the soleá in a bata de cola and tangos. How do you feel each of those styles?

I’ve always considered flamenco to be a way of life, in which there’s passion, pain, sobriety, joy, uneasiness, flirtation... It has the entire range of what occurs in life. To me, the soleá is the piece of distinction par excellence in flamenco. I do it in a bata de cola because it entails the trouble of moving it. There’s something that’s dominating you and you, besides the feeling you’re being wrapped up, have to embellish yourself with that which is dominating you. You shouldn’t mistreat or misuse; you always have to be embellished. Tangos, however, are something breaking, fun, conquest, joking. If you’re with a partner you want to have fun with, joking has to have priority. And if it’s to conquer him, you have to conquer him with gestures. That’s the way I see in flamenco. In each style, the behavior of our body has to agree with what we’re dancing. You can’t dance everything with a really tight face, you can’t dance everything based on percussion or on exercise. Flamenco isn’t only done to show power, strength, virtuosity, a single formation, but rather flamenco has many formations. Your body is a language in itself when it’s about dancing because there are no words. It’s all a portrait from your head down to your toes. Ever since I’ve had the power of reasoning in dance, that’s how I not only like to give flamenco, but also to sense it in another bailaor.

Merche Esmeralda (Photo: Daniel Muñoz)

Do you think young bailaores nowadays are slaves to technique?

And unfortunately for many creatures, they’re really mistaken. Not all of us people are born with all capacities. We can say about someone what a pretty head they’ve got, their arms about another one, another one’s quickness and cleanliness... Not everybody is born to take possession of something. If you aren’t born with the capacity, for example, for virtuosity, in the end you dance dirty, you don’t have speed... you’re crashing into a wall and the rest of us are missing a lot of other pretty things you can offer us. And that’s what a lot of people don’t understand. Everyone wants to dance the same thing and not everyone can because we’re not equal. And right now I’m beginning to see that not everybody wants to do little kicks any more. There are people who are discovering that behind the kick you’re left empty if there aren’t other things to say. This change is making me really happy because there was a time when everything focused on that. There were people who used to work wonders and others who just made it halfway. You’d see that those people were phased out by time; they didn’t make it, they gave the sensation of inability. You’d come out of the theater or the tablao tense, when it shouldn’t be like that. You go to see an artform to enjoy it and, if possible, when you go to bed, you need to go on seeing those pictures, to dream about them and even wake up to them because they’ve made an impact on your soul. What you can’t do is come out tense and feeling like having a beer or lime-blossom tea to get relaxed. In my own case, a beer. I always have a beer after dancing. My mother used to say that beer doesn’t make you drunk but bends you down. It relaxes you. And when I see something like that, I’ve got to have a beer...

Matilde Coral says she always carries some tranquilizers with her in her pillbox and she takes “half a pill” at the theater when she sees dancing like that...

Ha ha ha ha. What I feel sorry about is that a lot of people think that because we’re a certain age, we talk like that. I don’t think the past was better. I think the past was one thing and the present has to be something else. What I do think is that not everything modern’s good, nor is everything old-style either. The concept of old-style isn’t the same as old-fashioned. People who dance old-style have merit, but those who dance old-fashioned don’t, since they’re out-dated. I never feel out-dated at any time; I feel at the time I’m at, but with my vision of flamenco. If I can do two pirouettes, I’m not going to settle for just one. If I do two broken turns I’m going to do them, since they’ve meant a lot of work for me, and I’m not going to do just a single one which is what used to be done. If I move my arms from behind because my arms start from behind, I’m not going to put my arm forward nor am I going to raise my shoulders so that it looks like I don’t have a neck. I’m going to use this pretty thing I have to offer. No matter how flamenco it is, I don’t feel like being the hunchback of Nôtre Dame. My body isn’t made for that; it’s made to display beauty, which is what an artform has to display. Besides, a woman I admire immensely, Manuela Carrasco, I can’t dance like her... thank God! I admire other bailaoras a great deal, but I couldn’t dance like them, thank goodness. That’s why there are names in art, in the art of baile, in that of painting... Why shouldn’t you like Picasso, Van Gogh and Degas? How joyous to have that entire palette of color in art!

Do you believe, as Victoria Eugenia upholds, that women have to show off their weapons for baile, instead of taking men’s ground?

	"I really like to watch the greats dance and the less greats, because even the worst one has some good things"

Undoubtedly. A woman has cambric, her shoulders, hips, waist, regard... A woman has wealth from the waist up, which is how it used to be said that dancing was done and which has been lost in some. Careful; I of course won’t be the one to say that if on top of it you’re skilled from the waist down, then you’re well-rounded. The more complete you are, the greater you are. But just due to the simple fact you have good feet, good rhythm, good speed, doesn’t mean you have to blind everything else you have. On the contrary; you have to develop its potential and know how to enjoy it and say I do this, but on top of it I’ve got this other thing. What we can’t do is scorn or deprive others of what we have which is beautiful; on the contrary. The first thing I always do in my classes is to teach technique, because technique is the common thread to then make art. When you have the technique under control, you have to forget about it to develop art. Don’t forget your hip, waist, shoulder, hand, arm coordination... It isn’t even enough to have good arm movement if you have really ugly hands. The hand and arm coordination corresponds to two different joints and you have to show the pupil how to be coordinated with both things so that later on it’s innate when dancing. I really like to watch the greats dance and the less greats, because even the worst one has some good things. Even someone who gets away from the rhythm might have a pretty, unique gesture. That’s why I can’t understand how people who have the possibility to do a lot of pretty things settle for just one. Victoria Eugenia tells the truth; she’s a teacher through whose hands the best have passed. When people talk like that, you have to listen to them and not think they’re wrong because they’re at a certain age.

Merche Esmeralda (Photo: Daniel Muñoz)

Belén Maya admitted at a round-table in Jerez that young people bow to technique and forget that before, what used to carry weight was the artists’ personality on stage...

I started dancing at El Guajiro in Seville when I was about fourteen years old. I’d left the school Colegio del Valle, a nuns’ school with a strict education, where I used to stay for lunch. I never used to raise my voice, I never used to talk back. And my colleagues used to say there was a girl who danced really funny at El Guajiro. And they knew me because I was a girl who talked –and she speaks in falsetto - “really refined”. That shows how you’re singled out for your special way of being. Then dancing, since I have long arms and I begin from behind, I did a different kind of arm movement, probably not such an orthodox way as what used to be done. When I used to dance they’d say “now she’s going to dance the swan lake”. And they’d laugh a little; they said it jokingly. A colleague once told me that I didn’t dance the way Matilde taught us. And I answered that I didn’t want to be a ‘decal’, that I wanted to be me. It was really clear to me what I wanted to be like from a very early age. I’ve kept a review written by Antonio Blázquez in ‘ABC’ when I did ‘Medea’ in Seville recognizing that in Seville a road of thorns was laid out to me, scorning my way of dancing, mocking me. But he wrote that I went to Madrid and when I returned I’d shown that flamenco isn’t just a ‘little kick’ through bulerías. I learned a lot when I read it, since that scorn had really pained my soul. When I came to Madrid, everything that was a flaw in Seville was a virtue here. In my eyes, nobody can touch Madrid. I think it’s the most generous city – in Spain, definitely – in the world. No matter where you come from, you’ll be welcome. Madrid gathers all the facets, formations and variants of artistic movement. What to others disfigured me, here they’d say how curious, how funny, how beautiful. It was accepted; I’m not saying it was flattered. And my arms ended up being personal. I’m trying to say that a person doesn’t have to adapt to what others want. We people aren’t dopes, we don’t go around in a flock; we’re unique individuals and we don’t have to do what trends say. You don’t have to follow the majority, but must uphold your personality, your special way of feeling.

And in flamenco there’s room for a lot of personalities, a lot of currents, isn’t there?

Of course. You have to go with the flow of your feelings, with the flow of your knowledge. I’m the first one who’s had a lot of doubts and a lot of complexes. I’ve found myself at the school Amor de Dios for a long time with scarcely five pupils and seeing other classes jam-packed. I’m a bailaora with Andalusian school style and since that wasn’t “in”, I’ve been like that for years. Nowadays I’m noticing there’s an interesting change. Now in my class, without changing my style or my teaching, I have fifteen or twenty people. But when you have five people and you know that your teaching is well-rounded in turns, arms, head, choreography, feet... I used to wonder if I was wrong. I remember that when we’d get to Jerez every year, we used to talk about those things between the teachers. And Matilde used to tell me: “Merche, don’t get down, keep on fighting! If there are five, then five it is. There are just three of us who have the Andalusian school; we’ve got to keep on going. And if not, we’re lost”. And it’s true, the Andalusian school is different, more stylized, it has a lot of wealth. When that happens, you have a great many doubts. Even when you dance your way, you end up feeling unnecessary. There’s a generational age which somehow leaves you out. You feel old, and I don’t want old-fashioned baile which is old-style but out-dated. You have great doubts and you consider leaving. And you make resolutions which, deep down, are really positive. Dancers, probably because of the world they move around in, have their ego. And even with that ego, we have to have our feet on the ground, we have to know when is the time that which has been done has to be left there...

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