Flamenco x 2. Interview with Ángel Rojas and Carlos
Rodríguez, dancers
“We display flamenco dancing,
not flamenco baile”
Silvia Calado. Madrid, February 2010
Translation: Joseph Kopec
Ángel Rojas and Carlos Rodríguez
shift gears. After fourteen years refreshing Spanish dance
while heading up the Nuevo
Ballet Español, they now apply their particular
viewpoint to flamenco dancing. They say that the risk of
their new proposal, which they have just presented in London
and Madrid, lies in the esthetics and that it will be a
show which “will be remembered for its images”.
They have four female dancers beside them on stage and a
troupe of musicians who don’t escape from the movement
on stage. And at the studios, they relied on three choreographers
with indisputable flamenco flavor. ‘Cambio de tercio’,
they say, is the start of a new stage in the career of these
dancers who use the words “market” and “product”.
And now they feel the dizziness of how it will continue.
'Cambio de tercio', Rojas &
Rodríguez |
What is ‘Cambio de tercio’?
Ángel Rojas: ‘Cambio
de tercio’ is the most flamenco show we’ve ever
done in our lives, surprisingly.
Carlos Rodríguez:
And in order to do so, we’ve collaborated with people
who are flamenco; they can’t be called any other way.
Á.R.: Of course,
the collateral is necessary. There are many barriers in
flamenco; too many. And this doesn’t cause flamenco
to spread, since it’s impossible to stop, but it does
slow down the mind. What comes in and doesn’t come
in is a question that’s constantly in the air and
it’s a delay.
C.R.: Who’s more
and who’s less? Who’s purer and who isn’t?
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“What
comes in and doesn’t come in flamenco is a question
that’s constantly in the air and it’s a
delay”
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Á.R.: Thinking
about that is the stuff of people with little experience
or little interest in art. Flamenco doesn’t have real
purity; its purity is the mixture. Sometimes the mixture
is better than other times, but if it isn’t, it falls
down all by itself.
Spanish dance has been the starting
point of your work so far. How do you understand its relationship
with flamenco dancing?
Á.R.: They’re
first cousins. But you can almost see the fracture between
both disciplines more in Madrid. Here there’s a current
of like really strong flamenco flavor, but a little ill
in its continuity. People who have tremendous qualities
to dance everything and to be bailaores-dancers leave the
conservatory with incredible quality, and suddenly they
go to Amor de Dios and everything disappears there. It seems
as if they’re reset there.
C.R.: A shame. El Güito,
Manolete and many bailaores of that generation used to dance
in companies together with people of another style…
and earlier, Antonio and Pilar López. Antonio Gades
danced with castanets and even did the jota. I don’t
know what’s going on. It’s OK for each person
to specialize in what he wants, but so young? This is leading
to artistic mediocrity; I don’t think you have to
specialize when you don’t know what you are yet, what
fills you, what people like about you… There are those
who make that decision too soon.
Á.R.: As we’re
really vetoed in flamenco, it’s not that we want to
rile things up, but we do feel like saying: “Guys!
Is there anything else here?”.
C.R.: What we’re
specialized in is dance research, working with Spanish and
flamenco dancing. And that’s our style, providing
something new at every moment, different proposals.
Á.R.: Even if the
new is the traditional, which is so in this case.
C.R.: For the first time,
the new thing is to do a flamenco show.
Á.R.: Let’s
see if they shut up… or let’s see if they blow
up in rage. Noooo, it’s a joke; we didn’t do
it with that intention.
And how do you apply that style
of yours to flamenco?
C.R.: Esthetically, the
show is the most flamenco one there is on the market right
now. I don’t know why it came out like that, but we
started to look at pictures, scenes of things which have
happened throughout history… and it was really clear
to us that the old-time stuff was modern. What nearly seems
kitsch, when you see it on stage now it turns out fresh;
I see people with a smile.
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“We’re
nearly always abroad, because being here in Spain is
a little complicated”
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Á.R.: If I’d
been told a few years ago that I was going to put on a pair
of chaps and a wide-brimmed hat, I wouldn’t have believed
it. That’s what happens when you go to London!
Picasso used to say that the further
abroad he was, the more Spanish he felt…
Á.R.: Yes, that’s
true. We’re nearly always abroad, because being here
in Spain is a little complicated.
C.R.: Our tradition comes
out on the airplanes. When you start to move around Madrid
and you see that imitation flamenco, but not flamenco…
'Cambio de tercio' live, Rojas
& Rodríguez |
Á.R.: The thing
is, it isn’t looked after at all.
C.R.: The other day I
saw Miguel Poveda, who’s impressive. And when he starts
singing three flamenco-style coplas and the clappers appear
with that esthetics, you don’t understand why. With
him being so well dressed, with his short hair, all the
band he has, who are avant-garde… That should change.
We don’t reject it, but we feel like doing other things.
Á.R.: Yes we do,
but it isn’t negative. When you cultivate yourself
in an artform, it sounds a little ugly to say so, but you
look at everything from a different balcony. It’s
really clear to me. Nobody feeds me; I make a living all
by myself. We’re not conceited, but at the age of
seventeen we were producing our shows and now we’re
thirty-five. By now you know enough to say “look after
this, which is what all of us live on and don’t criticize
me so much because I keep on working, since what I do is
to open the door for you”.
C.R.: Changing subjects,
it’s nice to be wrong and get it right. We’ve
been mistaken many times for doing something different.
If we’d followed the road you know and you’ve
been taught, we might not have reached where we are now;
we’d have finished sooner and people would have gotten
tired of our product. It’s interesting for us to have
been able to afford to do all that, even making mistakes,
because people still have expectations. To be working on
this project and with people like this demonstrates that
we weren’t wrong about something. There must be something
that motivates them.
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“When
you cultivate yourself in an artform, it sounds a little
ugly to say so, but you look at everything from a different
balcony”
|
Á.R.: Above all,
they’re really special people. It isn’t that
they need to do a choreography with you or the money. They’re
people who are by nature really refined.
What has been the role of the three
guest choreographers?
Á.R.: Manuel
Liñán, Rocío
Molina and Rafael
Campallo have choreographed the show’s central
part: the solos of ours and the pas de deux. So we’ve
also lightened our burden in order to dedicate ourselves
to other things, to enjoy producing, directing, doing things
the way they’re really done.
Carlos Rodríguez
and Ángel Rojas, 'Sangre' |
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Why resort to choreographers from
the outside?
Á.R.: We’re
humble, despite possibly projecting a different image by
saying things very forcefully. That’s made us enemies,
and we’re open to being criticized by them; this is
a game. We like to keep on cultivating ourselves and it’s
perfect if people come from the outside to do something
that you no longer feel like doing. We’re at the point
where we can afford it.
C.R.: It’s made
it easier for us to achieve a balance. When you’re
the director and choreographer and you stage yourself, you
don’t see the whole. What they’ve choreographed
has been included in a whole already done. And it’s
fit in because they see it from the outside and they see
us. It polishes the show.
Á.R.: That way
you can see the show from the outside and cut here, delete
there… or modify the wardrobe. The batas de cola have
been repeated twice.
You see the dancers as “matter
which transforms”...
Á.R.: It’s
an excuse which Rodríguez thought up and it’s
cool. The show talks about what’s never seen, which
is the backstage, and we show it to the audience. They see
how matter really transforms, how a person suddenly turns
into something else. Your attitude changes, your energy
changes. That’s theater, that’s dance, that’s
stage magic. Nor are the musicians on a platform at the
back, as usually happens in flamenco, but rather they’re
included in the choreography. They don’t dance, but
they move around with us.
C.R.: Everything transforms
and pictures are created which are mixed with the dancing:
it’s seeing a musician take part in a show, not being
stage design. In what I dance, they walk around with me
and sing in my ear. That turns the musicians into a more
indispensable part. Here, they’re part of the scene.
What musicians are they and what
music have they made?
Á.R.: We have four
composers. It was complicated at first because they didn’t
understand what we wanted. We didn’t want a soleá,
but rather music for a choreography, not for flamenco dancing.
Each piece has a structure different to the usual in flamenco
and maybe out of a three-minute score, thirty seconds were
all we needed for the choreography. And of course, the musician
would throw his hands up to his head.
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“It’s
a show which displays flamenco dancing, without having
to structurally follow the set canons”
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C.R.: People aren’t
even going to think about it; it’s all really connected.
There are parts oozing with purity, like when Sandra Carrasco
sings por zambra; it’s unaccompanied and impressive.
As far as the rest goes, it’s a show which displays
flamenco dancing, without having to structurally follow
the set canons.
Á.R.: It didn’t
use to be like that; it was invented in the ’80s.
There was a fever and we still have the fever. Now then
we’ve also fallen, we’ve also bogged down and
danced soleá for twenty minutes. But you have to
move on. This show displays flamenco dancing, not flamenco
baile.
C.R.: Regarding the music,
we’ve done really psychological work. They’re
still flamenco musicians who admire the genre’s greats;
Paco de Lucía, Cañizares, Vicente Amigo…
and what they feel is more tradition. But we’ve had
to tell them to compose a nine-minute song for us and keep
three minutes of it. And they protested and we’d tell
them that we were going to pay them for it, for them to
keep it for their concerts, but for the show those were
the best three minutes. People don’t come to see him
just play, nor to see me just stamp my feet, but rather
to see how I connect with you. They’re all short songs
which are linked up.
'Cambio de tercio' live, Rojas
& Rodríguez |
'Cambio de tercio' live, Rojas
& Rodríguez |
You dance together with four female
dancers. Are they veterans from the company?
C.R.: We intended to work
with flamenco people, but we realized that it was going
to be a mistake, since our style had to maintain that freshness,
its spirit, its energy. And flamenco has a different edge.
Á.R.: They’ve
been working with us for eight years and they know us. It’s
a challenge for them to adapt to that esthetics, dancing
with those dresses… and on top of it, dancing in a
specific way, with a lot of research into the old-time dancers
such as Pilar López, and even current ones like Lola
Greco and Merche
Esmeralda.
C.R.: Ladies. There are
very few people now in flamenco who dance with a woman’s
elegance. Flamenco has so much force and women have wanted
to pour so much into that field, that they’ve lost
their feminine taste.
Who designed such a special wardrobe?
C.R.: Vicente Soler, the
fashion designer. Since we wanted it to be traditional and
the dressmakers had worked lifelong in flamenco dancing,
we needed someone to play it down. He’s really linked
to what we do and we asked him if he dared to tackle it.
He did, he presented the sketches to us and that was that.
Á.R.: Spectacular.
We’d already worked a bit with him and he’s
the one who dresses us for the public. There’s a lot
of feeling; he dresses you, for you, as a physical person,
not as an artist.
C.R.: He was just told
“look at these photos, look at these videos”.
He didn’t throw away a single design; we made them
all. He presented all of it to us with fabrics, with patterns,
with colors… a really professional job.
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“An
artist doesn’t necessarily have to have a vision
of production but if more of them did, flamenco might
be in a different place
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Á.R.: The show’s
greatest success as producers and as artistic directors
is that everything we thought up in London is a reality.
C.R.: It’s also
the first time we’ve done a show which arises from
the non-need to do so, and you’re really at ease and
have no anxiety... it’s something which happens to
you many times and it can make you make mistakes.
You use the words “product”
and “market”, which isn’t frequent...
Á.R.: The thing
is we aren’t flamencos, ha ha ha. I’m
giving you the headline.
C.R.: An artist doesn’t
necessarily have to have a vision of production but if more
of them did, flamenco might be in a different place. There
are few flamenco producers, who are the ones who love it
and look after it. And there are people who are really good,
but they’re a little loss and they’re going
to run out of time.
Á.R.: When you
get involved in this not just at an artistic level but also
at an economic level, as producers we have to know what
we’re doing and why. Separately, we have our individual
projects, something which nourishes you as a human and as
a creator. ‘Cambio de tercio’ is a product.
Coca-Cola is a product and if you sell it nicely, you make
money. And on top of it, we like money. The product isn’t
incompatible with your taste; we’ve reached a consensus,
which was easy because we’re similar as friends and
as partners. And we don’t have to sacrifice our purity
to make a product. We make shows to sell and for the public.
We’d also like to indulge in mental masturbation,
but then you can’t complain that you can’t sell
it. And it isn’t because it’s not valid or doesn’t
have artistic quality, but because the world is cut out
a certain way and you can’t go against the grain.
Go to a commune and become a hippy, but don’t complain.
If you’re in a world surrounded by institutions, subsidies,
morons who organize, people who don’t pay you…
you have to know that’s the way it is. It’s
really clear to us.
Ángel Rojas and Carlos
Rodríguez, interview
(Photo Daniel
Muñoz) |
C.R.: When you start producing
when you’re really young, the styles which are given
to you mark you and you conclude that it can’t happen
to you again... or at least not the same way. You accept
advice from people who know, like Miguel Marín. When
we’re thinking something up, we call him to get his
viewpoint. And he asks you if it can fit at such-and-such
a theater for three weeks or what price you can sell it
at. You have to work like that, not just because I make
a living at this, but because we’re responsible for
a great many other people.
Á.R.: We’ve
done 300 performances of ‘Sangre’ and it still
has a tour of Asia to go on. ‘Cambio de tercio’
is going to the box office for a month in Madrid, staking
several thousand euros on advertising. We’ve worked
hard for it, but we’re now in a privileged position.
We could be at a festival for three days, with your earnings.
But we don’t want that, but rather to spend a month
here and bring international organizers, expenses paid by
us. It’s going to be the thick of our work in the
next three years. And we’re not stopping there, but
rather we think that if it goes well, we’ll risk a
run in Paris. That’s how you have to go; complaining
is easy. And politicians are complex. I wish they were an
endangered species, but you have to live with them. We need
each other.
'Cambio
de tercio' live, Rojas & Rodríguez
|
Is it hard to strike a balance
between the “commercial” and artistic validity?
C.R.: The balance between
quality and marketability is really hard to achieve. You’re
always going to be branded as whatever; we turn a deaf ear.
When the product leaves Spain twice, then you realize if
you’ve done something good or not.
On speaking about the show, you
highlight the value of the Spanish...
Á.R.: ‘Cambio
de tercio’ is very Spanish, the most Spanish product
there is right now on the market. And it’s very folk,
pure deep roots.
C.R.: It starts with cuplés,
it has the fan, the shawl, the bata de cola…
Á.R.: … the
chaps, the wide-brimmed hat, the castanets… The important
thing is that Spanish spirit which is so recalcitrant, so
typical of the post-Spanish Civil War.
C.R.: Although the show
is really based on the traditional, the risk of the esthetics
was high. I wear a shirt which looked like a clown’s
when I saw it, but on stage it was totally appropriate.
Of course, I was surrounded by girls wearing short skirts,
their polka dots, the flower up there… If there’s
no risk in something, there’s nothing to gain. And
what makes the show special is the esthetics. Respecting
the musicians’ and choreographers’ work a lot,
when you recall ‘Cambio de tercio’ you’re
going to remember the images.
How do you size up the company’s
career right now?
C.R.: The result is positive
for having learned more from our mistakes than from the
good moves, for being able to enjoy what we like the most,
for earning the respect of people and our colleagues, and
for being able to afford to begin a new stage at this point
in time. And I still have the same excitement.
Á.R.: It’s
tremendous. The show’s official presentation is done
with a re-broadcast on two screens on the Movistar Building.
And that, after years of working like a slave, hearing a
bit of everything. You look back and it’s great. Yesterday
we had a meeting with the directors and it was really dizzying!
It was like putting on dance shoes for the first time. They’ve
hardly worn out.
C.R.: It’s really
a new stage because it’s the first time we’ve
done something like this and I don’t think it’s
going to be the last.
Á.R.: Now it’s
going to be hard to go on.
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