Joaquín Grilo in the back room of Spain's National Ballet. Special Feature

Simmering

Silvia Calado Olivo. Madrid, January 2004
Photos: Daniel Muñoz

The bank of the canal which today is the Manzanares River stretches out like a fertile plot of land amidst boundless city planning, amidst endless traffic jams... and also art. On the strip crossing the road to Toledo, the city's former slaughterhouses have replaced slaughterers with dancers, now having become the headquarters of Spain's National Ballet (BNE). The company's twenty-fifth anniversary is being celebrated with work. The corridors, lit up by extroverted December sunshine, are the hotbed of svelte men and women in work clothes... but only at times and for very few minutes. Everything suddenly becomes deserted and life beats behind studio doors. And it does so fervently, since with its sights set on January 23rd, the BNE is now working against the clock on its new repertoire to be premiered in Santander: 'Tiempo' by Joaquín Grilo and 'Colores' by Elvira Andrés. A wall and a few tones of the chromatic scale is between them.

Joaquín Grilo rehearses 'Tiempo' with the BNE

Joaquín Grilo. Coming to terms with the clock

The Jerez-born bailaor is facing the challenge of creating his first choreography for the BNE with as much excitement as responsibility. He treasures every second; he hardly gives the dance corps he has at his command a breather. "Head up!". "Grow". "Easy, easy. The movement has to be more elastic, like the sound of a guitar". "Ssssshhhhhhh". Joaquín Grilo paces up and down the room, guiding the group, profiling the individual. His job, once the technique of this soleá through bulerías is more or less absorbed, is one of contention, nuances, volume. And he is pointillist, meticulous, almost obsessed with perfection. Countless are the times that the sound technician has to stop the recording and go back to some flourish or another. And he is aware that they are never going to feel it the way he feels it. Feeling is not taught.

For this show, he who has been a member of Paco de Lucía's group for many years has music composed 'ex profeso' by Córdoba-born guitarist José Antonio Rodríguez. The connection between the two of them is the key to 'Tiempo'. "We talked to have him do it, signed and he got down to work immediately... we already know what a hard worker he is. When I listened to the rough version with him in Seville, by chance, everything coincided with what I had in mind: I really liked the rhythm of the soleá through bulerías, the fandangos, the tangos; I'd already thought up the show's title and its lyrics talked about time. I talked to him to touch up - if it can be called touching up - very few things, since it was just what I needed. It was a real delight for me. After that, we worked above all on the fandango, a few closes and little else. He gave me a polished job".

With the music already in hand, Joaquín Grilo concentrated on shaping its dancing. "Since I wasn't getting anything in Jerez, I went to Bologna for a couple of weeks with my wife. There I started to get what this guy was doing a little and what I wanted to get, since one thing is what he expresses and another is what I get. Each of us feels things very differently; he might feel some nuances which aren't the ones I see and that's what happens with dancers and musicians when performing". They were all in Madrid in mid-November. The gathering turned out positively "and the people in the ballet responded very well and with a lot of gusto". A month later, "we have like ten or twelve minutes set up between the jaleo and the soleá through bulerías. The hardest part is left, the end, the finishing touch; and the fandango which is still in the early stages, but at least now they have the technique. That has basically been the formula".

Joaquín Grilo rehearses 'Tiempo' with the BNE

At the same time, the bailaor and choreographer has "worked to find out a great many things about time. I bought a very complicated book which made me rack my brains incredibly because it was about philosophy, physics and mathematics. And there were really nice texts about time by thinkers from all eras. Very logical things, but ones you don't realize until you read them. One text said that we all know what time is, but when you're asked you can't explain what it is exactly, everything's always very relative. What is true is that something always has to happen in time; if not, there's no time. And depending on what point in time you do it, there's past time, present time and future time. And that's what there is in music: one note that's delayed, another that's landed and another which is further ahead. That's what it's about... and about having each person who's there with us dancing and playing understand that in a very special way, the way I understand it, which is more complicated".

To make the understanding flow, he has invited Brazilian percussionist Rubem Dantas to take part in the show, together with the musicians on the ballet's staff, in charge of performing the pieces created by the Córdoba-born guitarist. "It's very important to me for him to be there because he's going to provide the touch that I want. Sometimes I suffer the void of that thing he has and which I can't find in another percussionist, not for being better or worse, but for being different. The people who are in the BNE are coming through very well and are trying to perform it as well as possible, but it's still empty of... time, which moves, for there to be a specific weight, so that it's never going to fall down, the pulse of the matter. That's the word, pulse".

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