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You’re also worried about
the lack of knowledge of the references in flamenco. How
is that restlessness captured in ‘Flamenco XXI’?
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'Flamenco XXI', Dospormedio
& Compañía (Photo Daniel Muñoz) |
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R.E.: We think it’s
horrible. If an artist dedicates himself to an art form
and he doesn’t know the art he’s devoting
himself to, well, like Javier
Latorre says, if they were doctors, the death rate
would soar. The lack of general knowledge is what makes
you rebel like that. It isn’t to show how it’s
done, because you can neither seek that nor aim for it.
Normally, you don’t normally witness that; it’s
attained when people die, which is when everyone is wonderful.
There’s a lack of general knowledge but not just
in the new generations that are coming, but also in the
one there now... which, if it’s had those references,
has thrown them out. Nobody does Spanish classical, nobody
does bolero school and everyone has danced it like crazy.
Even the companies which should be doing that aren’t
doing it.
Do you think cante lacks a following?
R.E.: Cante, baile,
guitar, music, painting, architecture, everything. And
when a bailaor doesn’t know how to differentiate
between one cante and another, he’s a bailaor because
he performs steps. The problem nowadays is that even the
last ‘clink’ in a dance is staged; it’s
‘in’. “You stop the lyrics here because
I have to wink and the guitarist has to do ‘clonk’
for me”, (he says sarcastically). It all turns into
something preconceived without soul, without spontaneity.
I’m not talking about improvising because to improvise
you have to know a lot about baile. Are improvisations
eighteen measures in a row in syncopation? Eighteen beatings
in your body? No. It’s about improvising a dance
from above, in all directions. I don’t think a lot
of people have that capacity. What happens is that as
everything is all so preconceived, a dance is rehearsed
for two months and all the effects are staged, so people
don’t worry and the cantaor is going to do what
the bailaor tells him. And he might end up stopping at
a place where he shouldn’t stop because he’s
leaving the cante incomplete, because he’s leaving
the guitar in the lurch or because he’s bursting
a cante. And you see that in the new generations and in
the generations prior to us. And people with a lot of
renown and who are already in the books as great classics,
but they dance crossed because they haven’t got
a clue about cante.
How is the concept of ‘purity’
questioned in your show?
R.E.: To me, purity
is the street where Antonio Machado y Álvarez ‘Demófilo’
was born, the one parallel to Betis Street, which is where
my grandmother was born. There’s a really good photo
of Antonio
Mairena with his little hat and his glasses and at
the top it says ‘purity’; that. Because if
what seems pure today was heresy in its day, then what
purity are we talking about?
N.P.: In the show, for
example, Sabicas with Joe Beck. And Sabicas
was pure, wasn’t he? Now let those who say what
is and isn’t purity rack their brains. We aren’t
going to rack ours.
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| "You
have to have the capacity to enjoy Marchena and
to enjoy Talega, and not go off to extremes" |
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R.E.: The baile por
seguiriyas, which is the deepest and most flamenco one
through and through, was created by a native of Valladolid.
And he said that to dance por seguiriyas, the character
you had to get across was the one Pavlova got across in
‘The Dying Swan’. I think the concept of purity,
which in reality is flamencura, is misunderstood. Nowadays
you come out in a stance like La
Macarrona and they laugh at you. But if you come out
dancing wearing a jacket with shoulder pads up to your
ears, a polka-dot handkerchief, your hair really wet,
you give your body a beating and that’s pure. Nobody’s
ever beaten up their body dancing. Could La Macarrona
be purer? I think purity is misunderstood. To me, Juan
Talega singing por tonás is just as pure as
Pepe
Marchena. And you have to have the capacity to enjoy
Marchena and to enjoy Talega, and not go off to extremes.
'Flamenco XXI', Dospormedio
& Compañía (Photo Daniel Muñoz) |
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How did you go about selecting
the music?
R.E.: The selection
of the music has come by itself. The show came out in
2007, but it’s the product of studying for many
years, of seeing many photographs, of having very clear
references since we were little. And you get into the
dynamics of researching, of reading everything that’s
published... Of course, you have some of the books at
your bedside and others tucked away in boxes. Since you’ve
processed all of that information, you think out a show,
you think out what you want to do and it comes out by
itself. The selection was hard because since the cantes
from that period weren’t recorded, everything was
completely natural. The selection was hard but exciting
at the same time.
And that polyphonic chorus with
the most legendary voices of cante?
R.E.: I did the choral
part. I imagined all of them in a choir at a cathedral,
wearing tunics and singing. It might very well disconcert
the Talibans of the jondo. Well, the treatment is stylized;
it’s a fantasy. We aren’t going to make the
mistake of imitating Carmen
Amaya, Vicente Escudero or Rosario and Antonio, since
it would be unnecessary nonsense. We do daydream about
them. It’s a choreography of ours, at times, beginning
with theirs, like the seguiriya, which is based on that
of Rosario and Antonio, or the piece based on the tanguillo
by Antonia Mercé from ’35... They’re
fantasies, how we see it and what they contribute to us
when we study them and admire them, with all due respect.
And the same with cante; there’s a tribute to Marchena
in which three dancers come out with a mixture of Spanish,
neoclassical and flamenco dancing, all of it completely
stylized and with the three tuxedos, like when he said:
“Today flamenco dons its finest attire”. In
‘El punto del platanar’, three little bananas
come out dancing a guajira, a wonderful introduction with
an orchestra, which would be the part of the opera. There’s
a script, although it’s totally anarchic. It has
no chronology; we skip from one year to another, and it
doesn’t seem to make any sense, but it’s all
tied together. There are things that don’t need
to be told. The script is the base for that choreographic
concept we present, for that fantasy done based on all
the testimonies we’ve had in our hands and which
very few people take advantage of.
One of your sources was Pilar
López. What advice did she give you?
R.E.: We went to see
her because of a show with similar features. We wanted
her to redo a choreography for us, but she felt too old
to do it. And we had a wonderful conversation. Suddenly,
you find yourself in that sitting room in her house, where
García Lorca had been, where Dalí had been...
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'Flamenco XXI', Dospormedio
& Compañía, Festival de Jerez
2008 (Photo Daniel Muñoz) |
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N.P.: With the piano
where Lorca rehearsed with her sister (La Argentinita)...
R.E.: Her sister’s
shawl, a room which has everything arranged by Vicente
Escudero... And it’s still exactly the way he arranged
it for her one afternoon.
N.P.: You find yourself
inside a living museum. And of course, we asked her permission
to touch the shawl, to play the piano. For that woman
to spend her time on young people like us...
R.E.: We felt lucky.
She’s an example everyone should follow.
N.P.: That’s love
for dance, that’s an artist to us, not those jealous
people who guard their little treasures and don’t
show them to young people.
R.E.: When you go with
respect, with knowledge and you know what you’re
talking about, these kinds of such wonderful people and
with so much wisdom open the doors of their house to you.
The
exhibit ‘La noche española’ at
the Reina Sofía Museum has a lot to do with your
work. Do you look to the plastic arts?
R.E.: Of course we do,
because we’ve also based ourselves a lot on the
vision of the foreigner who came to Spain. Picabia, Gustave
Doré... even Silverio
Franconetti, the birth and the decline of the singing
café.
N.P.: Jean Cocteau with
Edgar Neville strolling around Seville...
There’s flamenco, Spanish
and contemporary dancing. How can that mixture be carried
out successfully?
R.E.: With coherence.
Knowing your profession well. We know that it’s
all been invented, no matter how much some people insist
on saying it hasn’t.
N.P.: And without wanting
to innovate.
R.E.: Simply looking
back, seeking modernity in a hand of Pastora
Imperio, which is more modern than many things that
might be done nowadays. And you do it and people say “oh,
how modern”. I’ve been told that at the tablao.
I’ve come out doing something by Pastora or arm
movement by Vicente Escudero and I’ve been told
how modern. That’s a hundred years old! Or a hand
by Lamparilla,
a stance by La Macarrona. And depending on where you put
it, it can have one effect or another. That’s the
way it is. And there’s a photo of the Café
del Burrero in 1881 which we reproduce and the thing is
that there’s someone who’s there like this
(and he puts his fist up to his temple).
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| "Expressionism
is on the face of a cantaor singing por seguiriyas" |
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N.P.: Which is totally
Mats Ek. People are surprised. Long ago, a dancer used
to study classical in his training. I’ve danced
at galas where I’ve danced bolero school and I’ve
been told “oh how strange, classical ballet with
castanets”. And you say no, this is bolero school.
People are surprised because you do an ‘antoniano’
leap, which could be like I don’t know how many
years old, and they say they’re acrobatics. People
get frightened and amazed, when it’s all been invented.
Classical training in a dancer of Spanish dance has to
be like eating; every day. There are things which can
be seen as modern, but they aren’t modern at all.
It’s simply about having knowledge, you relate all
of the show, the style of the show and it’s really
clear.
R.E.: The style we’ve
used many times is the de-structuring of movement based
on images, even on photographs. It’s all like a
mixture of different disciplines which can coexist if
at the moment you do a specific movement, you can see
modernity behind it.
'Flamenco XXI', Dospormedio
& Compañía (Photo Daniel Muñoz)
Antonio Ruz: In that
sense, what I’ve done in the show is to put together
a three-minute duo. They’ve given me a gift, the
entire show is a gift, the encounter is a gift and that
duo, more so. I think the fact that I can mix contemporary
or neoclassical dance, which is what I’ve been doing
for a long time, with a show of this caliber is based
on understanding the show’s concept. Before starting
to put it together, we talked about the show for long
hours, reading a lot of books... I think, in my humble
point of view, that I’ve understood what they wanted
to say, for example, with that taranta by Niño
Ricardo, which is a pleasure to dance and to stage.
I do things with Rafael and with Nani, but it’s
all a part of understanding what they want to get across.
And then the style, you can do the most absurd thing in
the world if it’s well understood. There are even
connotations of German expressionism, of faces and gestures.
R.E.: The thing is that
expressionism is on the face of a cantaor singing por
seguiriyas or por tonás. Why can’t we take
that movement to dance if it’s a cantaor singing,
if that’s dance, if when a cantaor moves well singing
he does some wonderful port de bras.
N.P.: We’ve learned
with Antonio that scratching your head is dance. As long
as it’s within a context and it makes sense, it’s
a movement.
A.R.: Yeah, everyday
movements can become dance on a stage.
R.E.: I’ve seen
marvelous choreographies in the street of people walking
and I was sorry not to have been carrying a video camera.
You really rack your brains at a studio to create a nice
movement and suddenly, you’re sitting at an outdoor
café and you see it. Knowing how to apply all that
and knowing how to mix it, but without wanting to do fusion;
each of us is quite different from one another, but the
three of us can coexist.
Laura Rozalén
on 'Flamenco XXI'
(Foto Daniel Muñoz) |
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A.R.: I flipped out
a lot with this work because in dance nowadays they say
you have to be serious, that you have to be flat and not
have that passion. And to me, on returning to flamenco
stuff you feel differently; the movement comes from a
different point. Contemporary dance is much more rational.
Being able to feel that again on stage and feel free when
expressing myself is very important in my career. I think
I’ve taken a step forward. And it’s not going
to end here; I think we’re going to keep on collaborating.
Is that “innovating from
the roots” possible?
N.P.: The intention
isn’t to modernize, but rather to do something that
makes sense, basing ourselves on the roots, which is the
information we can have. We don’t get up in the
morning and say “oh, I’m going to innovate”.
I grab a harness, some ropes and I fall from the gridiron
with a spotlight. Our intention isn’t to do strange
things just because; everything has meaning. Before doing
a step, we’ve done our homework really well on the
step we’re doing, on what we’re creating or
what we want to say. That’s the road we want to
follow. It’s doing things with coherence, simply,
with meaning.
R.E.: To feel good about
ourselves, due to how we’ve also seen the situation
and due to what everything’s like.
N.P.: People want to
innovate because they think that by doing something strange
or something different they’re going to draw attention
just because, because that’s what sells, because
it’s the fast way. And no, that’s not how
it is. Stick to your own thing. I’m a dancer of
Spanish classical and I’m not going to get involved
in something I don’t know down pat. That’s
why we call Antonio for certain parts, since he’s
the one who really knows contemporary. I’m not so
pretentious as to do something I don’t know down
pat. The problem is that flamenco bailaoras who want to
do something new dance contemporary and they haven’t
taken a course in their life.
R.E.: And many times
they’re also choreographers and they don’t
even know ‘El lago de los cisnes’ or they
don’t even know the first choreographic forms there
are in flamenco, which are the zambras granaínas.
And they say that circles aren’t ‘in’,
that lines aren’t ‘in’... How do you
undo a circle, a line, a diagonal, when it’s so
hard to do it on stage? Besides, you’re calling
everyone from Antonio to maestro Granero absurd. You have
to be really careful about what you say because you can
hurt people.
N.P.: And they do it
out of ignorance.
A.R.: They’re
biases. There are a lot in dance. Oh, the thing is this
is no longer ‘in’. Oh, that’s already
been seen...
R.E.: The problem is
they confuse art with fashion and when something’s
good, it doesn’t go out of fashion. That’s
why Bach hasn’t gone out of fashion, that’s
why Mozart hasn’t gone out of fashion, that’s
why Manolo
Caracol hasn’t gone out of fashion, that’s
why Antonio
Chacón hasn’t gone out of fashion.
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