RUBÉN OLMO, DANCER AND FLAMENCO BAILAOR. INTERVIEW
“We’ll see bailaores
doing ‘Olé de la Curra’ again, like in
the olden days”
Silvia Calado. Seville, November 2010
Translation: Joseph Kopec
There are artists who make it unfeasible
to uphold that bailaor and dancer are conflicting words.
Rubén
Olmo, for example. And he captures it so in ‘Tranquilo
alboroto’, a show premiered at Bienal de Flamenco
de Sevilla 2010 and awarded there with the ‘Giraldillo’
for best choreography, that will be performed at Festival
de Jerez 2011. All of it is created by him, from ‘Boceto’
to ‘El vuelo’, with ‘Las manuelas’
in between. Everything except a piece designed for him by
Israel Galván: ‘Falsa farruca’. That
collaboration is a tribute to the courage of a colleague
who he considers to be “a living myth”. But
he also pays tribute to maestros of the past like Manuela
Vargas, and the greats of flamenco ballet. He does so in
his polyglot way, but always giving every language of his
- whether it is classical, Spanish, bolero or contemporary
- his personal “flamenco beat”.
Is ‘Tranquilo alboroto’
a turning point after your first two shows, ‘Belmonte’
and ‘Pinocchio’?
Yes, they’re three totally different
shows. ‘Belmonte’ was more classicism and ‘Pinocchio’
was much more contemporary. And in this one I reflect upon
all those things, even the old-time shows too, but it has
a much more contemporary first part, where I show every
discipline that I’ve studied throughout my career,
and a second part, a flamenco suite, which I felt like doing
and displaying to the audience.
Following years in Madrid with
the Ballet Nacional de España and solo, has returning
to Seville made you lean to your more flamenco side?
I’ve always had a flamenco beat,
even though I do bolero school. I did feel like doing a
suite where it was all flamenco. But I go through every
discipline. The people who come to see me don’t come
expecting to find me in a short-jacket suit dancing por
soleá. I think we exhibit what we are. And this show
has turned out really rich in styles.
Rubén Olmo, 'Tranquilo
alboroto'
(Photo Eduardo Rubaudonadeu) |
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Do you think it makes sense to
distinguish between bailaor and dancer?
I think everyone can call himself as he
likes. I’m a dancer, of course, and very proud of
it. There are people who say so with a double meaning and
it’s not like that. The dancer is the person who has
studied different disciplines, has been in a studio, has
studied classical ballet, contemporary, has trained globally.
The bailaor is the person who has only studied flamenco
and has never gotten away from that. I think it’s
nonsense, a nuance in our dialect. Internationally, we’re
all dancers.
How does the style of classical
Spanish dance currently get feedback from the bolero school
and flamenco?
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“Spanish
dance now leans a little towards flamenco and flamenco
has been stylized”
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They’re uniting more nowadays: the
bolero school has that flamenco beat, Spanish dance now
leans a little towards flamenco and flamenco has been stylized.
That process is under way; everything’s being mixed.
Once again we’ll see bailaores doing ‘Olé
de la Curra’ like in the olden days, with their slippers
on. Everything’s coming back; you’ll see.
And all of that is being joined
by more contemporary styles…
Nowadays the backbone and the mother are
classical ballet and contemporary. Fortunately, we can enrich
ourselves from there. The contemporary greats have also
enriched themselves from us, have had that mastery and have
been smart. Look how Pina Bausch stuck to Eva
Yerbabuena in order to get that essence from her.
What does flamenco take from contemporary
dance?
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“You
shouldn’t copy, but rather grasp the essence and
profession which contemporary dancers have when working”
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In the approach to the shows, a great deal.
The bad thing is that sometimes that essence of a much more
open show isn’t grasped, but rather is copied. What’s
happening in flamenco is that we believe that the person
next to me hasn’t seen what I’ve seen and in
the end, I give expression to something which is by Jiri
Kilyan. You shouldn’t copy, but rather grasp the essence
and profession which contemporary dancers have when working;
it’s non-stop. They don’t wait for a festival
to come in order to go to a studio one month earlier. You
have to be continually seeking like them, doing experiments
so that after two months you can see if something comes
out which you can use. But it’s really good.
You have Israel
Galván as the choreographer of ‘Falsa farruca’.
What picture do you have of him after working so closely
together?
Rubén Olmo, 'Tranquilo
alboroto'
(Foto Eduardo Rubaudonadeu) |
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We all know that Israel Galván is
special and that he’s a great person, but the thing
is that when you work with him, he becomes even much more.
I’d been rehearsing since nine o’clock in the
morning and he’d tell me: “We’re going
to rehearse today, but just for a little while… from
five to ten”. And it was for two little steps! He
has everything the great choreographers have: he’s
meticulous, patient, a good person… Nowadays, and
I’m not exaggerating, he’s become a living myth.
He’s close by and he’s very young, but what
he became is a myth in flamenco as a classical bailaor and
he’s becoming a myth due to where he’s going
to and what he’s opening up for us. It isn’t
Graham technique, but he does look at the process of contemporary
shows. It’s a style which he has opened… sporty,
flamenco, contemporary… everything. And totally different
to what’s out there.
And what has he managed to get
out of you?
I follow him a lot and I understand him
when dancing. But knowing me, he’s opened up to my
way; he works to mix two styles. In the farruca you see
Israel’s touch in the staging and esthetics, that
audacity and that way of laying it out on stage, but you
see Rubén dancing.
In the rest of the show the choreographic
layout is yours, both in the solos and in the group choreographies,
isn’t it?
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“Israel
Galván has fought for something, even when I’ve
seen half of the audience at a theater get up and leave”
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All of it. That’s why I wanted someone
else’s touch to be in one of the solos. And it was
my tribute to his courage. Israel has fought for something,
even when I’ve seen half of the audience at a theater
get up and leave. And he’s followed that road. In
the end, we’ve understood him and we’ve seen
the work and that it works and that he’s one of the
most-followed artists internationally.
And what is the public going to
find in ‘Tranquilo alboroto’?
Emotionally, a lot. Watching it as a choreographer
from the outside, I think the audience is going to get excited
and enjoy themselves, since each scene is a different form.
As a performer, I don’t know how I’ll be welcomed…
but I’m excited and it has to arise. I’m going
to display my work. There are few world premieres at the
Bienal; it’s a risk. And it had to come in like that.
There are provocative images: the
phoenix, the ecce homo, Manuela...
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Rubén Olmo, 'Tranquilo
alboroto'
(Photo Eduardo Rubaudonadeu) |
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Yes, well, somewhat radical like the sacrifice
of the dancer or me playing the role of Manuela. The girls
are the different ‘manuelas’ and I close with
her mirabrás. I don’t do an imitation of Manuela
Vargas, but rather it’s a work of body expression,
of observing her a lot. I go in a silhouette, but it looks
and smells like Manuela. Matilde Coral has sat down at the
rehearsals and told me that I was moving her to El Guajiro.
People close to her gave me keys. And they’d tell
me: “Rubén, perfect, but exaggerate it more
because up on stage, she didn’t do it the way it’s
recorded, but rather she snorted out what happen to come
to her. Exaggerate it more”. I picked up those little
touches as I went along. It’s done with affection
and not just for me to put on a bata de cola, because nowadays
you can do so at any moment, but rather to pay her a little
tribute, and above all, for that mirabrás to be seen
which is no longer danced like that nowadays.
Has Matilde
Coral seen you in the bata?
In the bata, with the wig and with everything.
She was delighted. She knows how much affection I’ve
done it with and she knows that it took me nearly a year
to watch videos and study her body and the shape of her
back, her expressions with her face, she who always used
to strike her body… Everything’s exactly the
way she used to dance the mirabrás; not a single
back comb has been changed.
There are tributes to other figures…
To the great ballets of Antonio
Ruiz Soler, Pilar López, Antonio Gades…
of all those people who made flamenco something greater.
Gades, for example, always did very sober, serious, careful
work with his company. And above all, I want to highlight
the ballets and the numbers which used to be done by Carmen
Amaya, Vicente Escudero, Pastora Imperio…
The collective versus prevailing
individualism…
The truth is that they used ballet in a
register as if to change clothes. It was a different concept,
not for giving the dancers a chance. But I’ve also
done that concept and it’s been done by companies
such as Eva Yerbabuena’s; it isn’t something
classist. Everyone’s important in the company, but
it’s for a reason. It’s like that and it’s
a concept, too.
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