FLAMENCO X 2. INTERVIEW: BELÉN MAYA & OLGA PERICET,
BAILAORAS
Double search for emotion
Silvia Calado. Jerez, March 2010
“We flamenco bailaores are
like islands, each one working on his own ground, isolated
and alone, without sharing anything with others”.
For years now, Belén
Maya has insisted on the need for flamenco’s
individualities to join together. And stemming from that
restlessness is ‘Bailes alegres para personas tristes’,
a production in which her island and that of Olga
Pericet intertwine, forming an archipelago. United by
intuition and mutual admiration in this show premiered at
Festival de Jerez 2010, the bailaoras have developed a complex
search… and not for steps, but for emotions.
Belén, we know that you’ve
always been looking for accomplices. How does this encounter
with Olga Pericet come about?
Belén Maya: It
all comes from a stubborn idea of mine, as always. I’d
known Olga for some time; I’d seen her dance a long
time ago. We coincided on a contract and we said, go ahead,
this is going to be the next one. First there’s that
desire for that person to work with you, but then there’s
the process of really seeing if you have something in common.
It isn’t a baile by you and another by her, but rather
there’s real work together and sometimes there you
realize that you really like her, but you don’t have
anything in common.
And what did you see in her?
B.M.: I like her a lot
because she looks old to me when dancing, I see she has
a style with details like that of an old-time bailaora.
And that’s not usual in her generation and in her
training as a dancer. I was always surprised by those details
which are like from fifty years ago. And it isn’t
something she’s learned, but rather it just comes
out like that. I love that. And then there’s that
personal connection which you realize is there or isn’t
there. I see that you can be at ease with her, seeking but
calmly, getting down to work but with enough time. I don’t
know; it was intuition. I thought it was going to go well
and indeed, we saw from the beginning that there were things
in common, that we respected one another and that there
was confidence in each other’s work. When you get
into work like this, you get scared… And you suddenly
realize no, that you trust her completely and if she bends
over backwards it doesn’t matter, since you know it’s
going to be fine.
Belén Maya & Olga
Pericet,
'Bailes alegres para personas tristes' (Photo Daniel
Muñoz) |
Olga Pericet: It’s
true; the same thing happens to me with her.
B.M.: We have full mutual
trust and also full trust in the directors. That’s
what has saved us because there were moments in the process
when we said what’s this, what are we doing, I’m
going to be horrible, nobody’s going to fall for this,
my career’s going to be buried…
O.P.: Trust is what pushed
us forward, and our union.
Olga, how did you know that you
fit into Belén’s project?
O.P.: I’ve always
thought the same way as her. I’ve always liked collaborating
with people who interested me, with Manuel Liñán,
Marcos
Flores… I’m a bailaora and a dancer and
I like taking risks and for it to contribute things to me.
I have an eternal search which is innate in me and I can’t
help it. Sometimes I know that I’m going to be more
at ease putting my name on it and doing my stuff and that’s
it, but I like the slow road better… or not having
a road or having my own and collaborating and being there
to see what’s happening. And when Belén told
me about it, which moreover I asked to work with her, because
we coincided and I loved her way of dancing and being and
everything, it was like saying “I don’t know
her, but I understand her”. And when she called me
up, I said yes without thinking about it. As she says, the
element of fear is there; you don’t know very well
where everything was going and the directors’ process
is another world completely… it wasn’t just
the two of us reaching an agreement. You go into work which
involves directing, but also the ease of choreographing
it, which I was really into. And there’s been total
communication. And with Belén, well, you can imagine…
she already knows that I admire her a great deal. I think
she’s flamenco’s contemporary esthetic reference,
since Saura’s first film and from much earlier, since
she comes from a family with a total revolutionary, with
everything that Mario gave to flamenco. I trembled a little
when she proposed it to me. Of course I’ll go with
you wherever you want!
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Belén
Maya & Olga Pericet,
'Bailes alegres para personas tristes' (Photo Daniel
Muñoz) |
In the choreographic sense, how
is that combination expressed?
B.M.: We got together,
I went to Madrid, she spent more time with me in Seville…
and we started to bring out material with the batas, since
the duos between the two of us were going to be with batas.
The hard work began from there. The dancers get together
and you can bring out four hundred bailes and a thousand
steps. But we got together with the directors and Juan Carlos
was the one who shaped it up in the story and the esthetics.
And he has a concept of flamenco and, in general, esthetics
which aren’t very kind or very “nice”.
He and David Montero weren’t keen at all on the ‘nice’
and they didn’t want anything nice or kind either
in the esthetics or in the choreography. They really made
us knuckle down…
O.P.: You had to reach
within and see what came out…
B.M.: Taking it all to
the max and also performance-wise. I think there was also
a step for us there. First, for you to be directed and asked
and told “no, no, that finish is out”. We’re
always very attached to our steps and our choreography and,
all of a sudden, half of what you’d put together was
ruled out. “And now do this four times”. I don’t
know, that directing which makes you humbler with your work
and with your material, putting yourself at someone’s
orders. We’ve had a ton of arguments, especially me
since I’m really rebellious, but then in the end you
say OK, if I have a director, I have a director and I have
to grin and bear it. And on the other hand, you’re
being asked not just to do the steps, but to tell something
with those steps. And as David Montero says, without theatrics,
without exaggerating, without that mime of flamenco ballets…
a little subtler, more underground. That’s been really
really hard for me.
O.P.: It was like doing
surgery and bringing out your emotion towards where they
wanted to take it, for the audience to keep it and bring
out their own.
B.M.: Of course, not make
it all so obvious to them.
O.P.: And nothing is really
told, but rather they’re emotions placed there, expressed.
It’s been real surgery, it’s been opening yourself
up, and we all did it.
B.M.: That work has been
really nice and really new; I’d never done it before.
And that was just what I wanted, I wanted to go elsewhere
with the shows because there was already something repetitive
in that business of presenting a show, going to Jerez, the
Bienal, your little dances… I don’t know, the
circle had closed for me and I don’t want to go on
with that; I wanted something else. That’s why I called
her, that’s why you seek a way to bring things out
of yourself. It’s been a process with a lot of doubts,
a lot of fear, a lot of insecurity, of not knowing where
it was going… we had a hard time of it.
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Belén
Maya & Olga Pericet,
'Bailes alegres para personas tristes' (Photo Daniel
Muñoz) |
And have the musicians also suffered
that process?
B.M.: The musicians have
suffered endless hours of rehearsal.
O.P.: And also of musical
search. It’s turned out to be a really flamenco show,
but other things have also been sought and another way of
getting there, to that flamenco edge, which is different
and new. It’s been hard work for them to unite that
musically with what we do; it’s been a total search.
Aside from that, they didn’t know one another.
B.M.: I’d only worked
with Jesús
Corbacho, but I hadn’t worked with either Miguel
Ortega or Juan José, just a tiny collaboration with
Antonia, I hadn’t worked with Patino…
O.P.: It was a contribution
of theirs. And for your work to open up to the person you
have opposite you with whom you’re collaborating,
that’s already a search.
B.M.: The truth is that
the poor things have also had a hard time of it.
But here, you stop being islands
to become archipelagos…
B.M.: At least in our
little world which we’re creating. You create your
career and your world the way you want, and we’re
going there. I have more collaboration projects and I don’t
think I’m the only one. I’ve read in several
news articles that this past Festival de Jerez was a festival
of collaborations and that’s amazing because it’s
really hard for us.
O.P.: It’s always
scary and your ego is always ahead of you. You cook it up
and you eat it. And less ego is needed in flamenco dancing.
Belén Maya & Olga
Pericet, 'Bailes alegres para personas tristes' (Photo
Daniel Muñoz) |
