Flamenco x 2. Interview with Nani Paños
& Rafael Estévez, bailaores
“Purity in flamenco is misunderstood”
Silvia Calado. Jerez, March 2008
Translation: Joseph Kopec
Dospormedio & Compañía
is the response which Rafael
Estévez and Nani
Paños gave to their artistic restlessness just
when the rarefied ambience of dance was beginning to disillusion
them. The tandem consisting of the two bailaores then
laid out a road of their own which has already led to
projects of the magnitude of ‘Flamenco XXI’.
The show, a revelation at Festival de Jerez 2008, is like
the exhibit ‘La noche española. Flamenco,
vanguardia y cultura popular’... but in motion.
And the thing is that they resort to a vibrant selection
of old-time choreographic, dance, photo and musical references
in order to question the concept of purity. Was Sabicas
pure when he played with Joe Beck? Read on, read on.
'Flamenco XXI', Dospormedio
& Compañía (Photo Daniel Muñoz)
How does Dospormedio & Compañía
arise?
Rafael Estévez:
The company arises out of an artistic need, since the
time comes in our career, a time early on, unfortunately,
when the work we’re doing with other companies no
longer satisfies us nor nourishes us artistically. And
more so considering what the dance scene was like at that
moment. As a result of all that, it so happens that I’m
called up as a guest at the Madrid Choreography Contest
and that was our first job together.
Nani Paños: The
problem, in the case of my career, is how you realize
the injustice there is at an artistic level. The excitement
you have when you’re young starts to fade, you no
longer feel like dancing, they overshadow you as a person,
they overshadow you as an artist. And you realize that
you no longer have all the excitement you used to have
to be in a certain company or to work in certain places.
That’s where our personal work begins.
How has the company evolved since
it was founded?
R.E.: The two of us
founded the company with that four-minute choreography;
afterwards as choreographers we created a Spanish dance
suite for the ‘Gala de Estrellas de la Danza’
at the Teatro Real in Madrid, with a troupe including
María Vivó, Gala Vivancos, Kira Jimeno,
Mayte Bajo and Lola Greco. From then on, we did some other
pieces and we invested the money we were paid as we went
along in presenting projects. It goes in crescendo.
'Flamenco XXI', Dospormedio
& Compañía (Photo Daniel Muñoz)
You speak of yourselves as choreographers,
a facet which is a little neglected in flamenco. Do you
think there’s a lack of training?
R.E.: There’s
no training as choreographers in flamenco. Choreographers
are self-taught in Spain. Then you have to differentiate
between choreographer and ‘dance stager’.
A choreographer becomes one over the years and is a choreographer
when he has knowledge not just of how to stage one step
after another. I mean knowledge of seeing, the global,
of having seen classical ballets, of feeding on every
artistic current. There are choreographies in the street,
the Cro-Magnon man’s caves have paintings which
are choreographies, there are choreographies on a Roman
vase... Connecting one baile to another isn’t choreographing.
A choreographer has to have a global vision, know how
to tell a story, know where each thing comes from and
why.
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| "A
choreographer in flamenco can’t just have
flamenco style under control" |
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N.P.: He must have knowledge
from several disciplines. A choreographer in flamenco
can’t just have flamenco style under control. When
making something materialize on stage and more so when
you use a storyline, you have to have several artistic
styles. It’s wealth that a choreographer contributes
to a show; it’s everything. I think that’s
why there’s such a mess when a choreographer who
is exclusively from flamenco stages something with a storyline;
because he doesn’t have the styles. You have to
know all the classical nomenclature, you have to know
what a croisé is, an effacé, a diagonal...
a series of things of which there are those who have no
knowledge. That’s why I think Rafael and I do that
tandem; besides him knowing the classical nomenclature,
he’s really up-to-date as far as flamenco goes.
R.E.: And now with the
third element, Antonio Ruz...
N.P.: He’s contributed
not just style to us, but also a show concept in every
sense. A more contemporary concept.
Rafael Estévez on 'Flamenco
XXI' (Photo Daniel Muñoz)
And in the history of flamenco
dancing, can some reference be followed as a maestro in
the facet of choreography?
R.E.: Antonio
el Bailarín, of course. There are more, but
the work isn’t so well known because it is from
another era. Like Vicente
Escudero; there are videos of him dancing but we just
know him as a choreographer through photos, you can get
an idea. As far as I know, we can just see choreography
of his in the film ‘Goyescas’ by Benito Perojo.
But the model we follow in that explosion of fantasy of
what choreography is, of impossible movements, of modernity,
is Antonio, a genius of Spanish dance.
N.P.: Maestro Granero
was a person who used to contribute, who made you see
wonderful points of view, the energy he released, everything
you learned. He’s told me things that stick in your
memory, and it’s wonderful that, despite being young,
we’ve had the chance to be at his side. I feel lucky.
And I’m a little worried about young people now,
who haven’t been able to latch onto maestros like
that.
R.E.: He had the virtue
of making the worst dancer look good, well that... And
from Antonio
Gades, for example, plastic art, the sense of basic,
minimalist esthetics, which told a lot of things with
four steps, the naturalness of movement, the way of laying
out a scene with no tricks... more than as a choreographer,
as a stage vision.
Nani Paños, on 'Flamenco
XXI' (Photo Daniel Muñoz)
Still being young yourselves,
you say you worry about the new generations, about how
“jumbled up” everything is...
N.P.: The pillars which
young people notice today, the society being what it is,
is all fast, is all television... and what’s seen
of dancing there is pitiful. Besides choreographing, having
a company, dancing, we’re teaching classes, we have
pupils and I think it’s a really big responsibility.
You’re in a class and you ask and they haven’t
seen ‘Ritmos’, ‘Medea’, ‘Danza
y tronío’, ‘Eritaña’...
of course you worry. Despite our youth, we’ve worked
a great deal in a lot of companies. Although it hasn’t
all been good, in short, we’ve learned. We would
watch the director when it was his turn to dance and we
didn’t even breathe, when a colleague was dancing
and you had to go from one side to the other you walked
on your soles... things which in the last companies I’ve
worked in, I saw a lot of horseplay; therefore that disappointment
and that decision to create a company, to try and do it
better.
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