Rafael Amargo, bailaor. Interview

"Flamenco has plenty of talent
and lacks perseverance"

Silvia Calado. Madrid, May 2004
Translation: Joseph Kopec

Rafael Amargo is enjoying a sweet point in time. He left behind the "rotten" period and the scorn of flamenco, a world which he would like to move away from little by little, at least, with an eye to the public. With three straight 'Max' prizes for best dancer, several shows on tour with his own company - 'Enramblao', 'Poeta en Nueva York' and 'El amor brujo' - and a new project for next season based on 'Don Quixote', the bailaor or dancer or artist - he doesn't mind - is enjoying a fertile time, full of ease, fame, success. Of course, his stinger is sharpened and he doesn't beat around the bush when he has to talk about the pains of flamenco, an art he says he respects... and contributes to enhance.

Rafael Amargo in 'Poeta en Nueva York'

Rafael Amargo is spending the summer in Madrid, having his season at the Alcázar Theater. He premieres 'Enramblao', a show, there...

...Dedicated to the life that is alive and well in the streets. It's a tribute to my stay in the city of Barcelona, where I lived. It was a very crazy, very 'loco' period in my life. And now that I'm released from all that, I can talk about it now and pay a tribute to that state of mind. It's a series of pieces, some flamenco and others less flamenco, but all have the 'Amargo' trademark, a very personal and very peculiar trademark, which means doing what one wants at each point in time. There's everything from hip hop to tap dance; there are characters that I ran into going down the street... Reflected, for example, is a story of comprehension and beautiful love with a prostitute; a tale with a quick-change artist who went down to Chinatown to work every night, living statues, mimes...

And what does that 'Amargo' trademark consist of?

I don't know. The experts recently defined me as being an eclectic dancer. I don't understand the word, but I like it so much that I'll hold on to it.

Dancer? And not bailaor?

Yes, I'm a bailaor, but I can also be a dancer. I'm someone who moves around because there's music and because there's movement in my body. I'm at a time when I neither really know what I want, nor what I'm doing, nor where I am, nor what I am. I'm at a very complicated, but very healthy stage, because I've overcome others that were much more rotten.

But that will turn on creation, won't it?

Yeah, absolutely. But I'm better now, mellow.

How does flamenco match with those other disciplines you touch upon?

Flamenco is such a great artform and it has such rich raw materials that it matches with all artforms which like flamenco are racial, are from below.

You are also continuing to stage 'Poeta en Nueva York'...

'Poeta en Nueva York' is my complete show, the most important one I've done so far and the one I feel most comfortable in. And I'm going to do the international tour with this show. I'm spending the months of June, July and August here in Madrid to finish having my house built, but in September I'm going to South America, to the Caribbean, nice and warm...

How is your act received abroad?

Flamenco is liked a lot everywhere, especially mine, which touches on more fields. I take dancers of contemporary dance, since more than flamenco, I'd tell you I have a dance, music, art company.

Rafael Amargo

There's an interruption here. One of his collaborators shows him the studio photo that will soon appear in a Sunday periodical. He is nude in a posture which could be called flamenco. Despite being an e-mail printout, the picture's beauty is appreciated. And he loves it. "If it appeared on the website, the server would collapse on us". "Oh, flamencos are so weird, I don't know, I don't know". When he puts it away in the rehearsal bag - he's at the Albéniz Theater preparing his performance at the International Dance Day gala - he starts laughing and comments that "I'm the only flamenco who's going to rehearse with a Louis Vuitton bag. I'm very prissy; I love designer labels, oh, that has always been very important to me, hasn't it?". It isn't necessary to mention the irony of his words... We proceed.

How would you present 'Poeta en Nueva York'?

It's a journey through the most significant parts, selected by me, of 'Poeta en Nueva York' by Federico García Lorca. You hold on to the different states of mind, with the different visions the poet has of New York in the year 1929. I didn't want to do anything by Lorca; it's as if in flamenco you're forced to do it. But revising the work I realized that it was not Lorca writing in the fertile plain of Granada, but rather much more open, like I am.

And born in the same place...

I think that's why I love that poet so much. We have so many things in common... His impressions of New York that he relates in the year '29 are the same as mine in '96, the first time I went there. You get goose bumps when you think that the same thing happened to me.

You also have 'El amor brujo' in your current repertoire.

'El amor brujo' is a classic and that's it. It's a slightly less conceptual revision, but it's still a confined ballet. Although I go back to the first version that was done in 1915, the one by Pastora Imperio, and I wanted to return to the roots, I also wanted to give it a more punk, more 'Amargo' aura.

How would you sum up this latest phase?

I'm blissfully happy. I'm eating everything up, I'm filling all the theaters, the flamencos... hate me! Recently Juan Verdú -journalist and promoter - called me over at a party and told me: "Amargo, you're the flamenco terrorist". I loved it. How all the ones there are would like to be terrorists like me.

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