SPECIAL FEATURE. IMPORTED FLAMENCOS. BAILE (I)
Baile without a passport
Silvia Calado/ Flamenco-world.com, August 2010
Since its very origin, flamenco
has been an export product. The tourism back in the nineteenth
century, that of romantic travelers, was a key factor in
the jelling of this artform, which gives Spain one of its
best-known trademarks abroad nowadays. And it’s logical
that the stories by Charles Davillier and Walter Starkie
lured apprentices from halfway around the world to its point
of origin and that, inversely, artists from here went out
to display and teach the secrets of their art. The nineteenth-century
press is full of examples. Then came tours around America,
the schools in Paris, post-war exile, macrofestivals, low-cost
flights… Throughout the past two centuries, that hotbed
scattered here and there has born its fruit. And now, amidst
Sánchez, Morente, Garrido and Montoya, there’s
also De la Rúa, Brûlé, Van der Sman
and Yura.
1. BAILE WITH DUAL NATIONALITY
Karen Lugo. Festival de Jerez 2010 (Photo Javier
Fernández- Festival de Jerez) |
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All you have to do is take a peek in any
academy in Seville, Madrid, Granada or Jerez to check out
that many baile students, sometimes the majority, have a
foreign passport. And it’s logical that a certain
percentage, albeit small, will opt to devote themselves
to flamenco professionally. Some of them will do so in their
countries of origin, but others will attempt to achieve
what’s harder: to make a place for themselves in companies
and tablaos here. There will even be those who fight to
forge their own name… and who manage to do so. But
you don’t have to fantasize about the future to verify
it; rather, take a look at the programs of this very year’s
festivals…
… or this very summer’s. For
example, the Córdoba Guitar Festival. The star bailaora
in ‘El
duende y el reloj’, a show by Javier Latorre’s
new company, is called Karen Lugo and is
Mexican. She already presented herself with her name solo
in the ‘Los Novísimos’ series of Festival
de Jerez 2010. However, it’s been a long, hard road
to get to both events. In her hometown of Jalisco, she began
her training in classical and Spanish dance. But flamenco
would be the discipline which made her journey thousands
of kilometers at the age of seventeen in order to draw straight
from the maestros of the school Amor de Dios in Madrid.
That was the platform for her to turn professional, getting
started in different companies and at the capital’s
renowned tablaos. Until the time came for her to speak up.
She did so at the 2008 Spanish Dance and Flamenco Choreography
Contest, in which she won third prize for her piece ‘Sombras,
raíces del ser’. And from Madrid to Jerez…
and from Jerez to Córdoba.
An even more extensive career in flamenco
made in Spain is that of Canadian bailaora Chloé
Brûlé-Dauphin. But not precisely
solo; rather forming a fruitful duo with Sevillian bailaor
Marco Vargas. Beginning with their encounter in ‘Inmigración’
by the Ángeles Gabaldón Company, they started
creating together with the aim of “reaching another
system, while still being flamencos”. The first thing
they put together was a street show for Seville’s
Dance Month, ‘Las 24’. Next, the theater version,
which reached Mérida’s Classical Theater Festival
as well as Festival de Jerez. Seville’s 2008 Bienal
hosted the premiere of ‘Ti-me-ta-ble’. And on
September 23rd, that will be the venue where ‘Alejandrías.
La mirada oblicua’ is revealed, a show based on classical
mythology in which both take part together with Juan Carlos
Lérida and Juan José Amador.
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Chloé
Brûlé and Marco Vargas, 'Ti-me-ta-ble'
(Photos Daniel
Muñoz)
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And how did Chloé get to Seville?
Well, first she carried out studies in classical dance in
her native Canada: “I started doing all kinds of dances,
including Argentinean tango, and on a tour of the United
States I got to know flamenco through some people from Córdoba
and I went to Spain to study flamenco”, the bailaora
explains. Her first professional work was ‘Rinconete
y Cortadillo’ by Javier Latorre, “performing
in really nice festivals”. She also worked with Israel
Galván in the production ‘Torero Al-Lucinógeno’
and was even in Japan, like so many bailaores, with a season
at the tablao El Flamenco. And all of that took her more
than a decade of study and work.
There have also been other imported bailaoras
together with Israel
Galván. Nicolia Morris raised
expectations in ‘La metamorfosis’ (‘Metamorphosis’),
a show premiered at Seville’s Bienal de Flamenco 2000
inspired by the book of the same name by Kafka. The bailaora,
a black artist from London, played the role of the sister.
She faced the responsibility of performing some of the most
intense moments in ‘Inmigración’, a show
of social denunciation. With some of the members of that
lineup, like bailaor Felipe Mato and Moroccan musician Jallal
Chekara, she helped form the mestizo flamenco group Harmattan.
She reached such special professional experience following
her training period at schools like the Cristina Heeren
Foundation in Seville, where she drew on flamenco by the
hand of maestros of tradition such as Milagros Mengíbar…
and of the avant-garde, like Israel Galván himself.
Nothing in her physique distinguishes her
from the Fernández-Montoya family. And in fact, Keren
Pesach ‘La Hachara’ looked like just
another member of the Farruco family in many of their performances.
There are some alegrías in a bata de cola circulating
on Youtube which she danced together with Adela Campallo
in ‘Alma vieja’ by Farruquito.
Before reaching that point, she spent ten years training
in situ, at the school Amor de Dios in Madrid,
in Jerez de la Frontera, and finally, in Seville with the
Farruco family.
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| Keren
Pesach 'La Hachara'
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But she brought the base from her country,
where her dance instructor, Ruthie Arnstein Barnea, introduced
her to the flamenco world. She even participated there in
the competition of the Tel Aviv Flamenco Days Festival,
organized by the Adi Foundation, where she finished in third
place. And she is now once again in Israel, where since
2006 together with her colleague Avner, she has directed
a flamenco academy and company called Remangar, which has
already staged shows such as ‘Entredos’.
Also originally from the East is Leilah
Broukhim. But her story is totally different: she’s
the daughter of Sephardic Jews who emigrated from Iran to
New York. Leilah was born there, she studied Cinema there
at Columbia University and she made contact there with flamenco
dancing, which she has devoted herself to entirely for over
a decade. She herself reveals the reason: “I never
felt 100% comfortable in the other dance styles I’d
done since I was little (ballet, tap, jazz); I felt that
something was missing. And when I began taking flamenco
classes, I felt at home right away, everything was more
of a whole for me”. She was given the base by instructors
from her hometown. And once in Madrid, she continued her
studies at Amor de Dios. Her professional career kicked
off in the two U.S. companies Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana
and María Benítez Teatro Flamenco. Next, she
performed at the leading tablaos in Spain. And she even
did a season at the Sala Andalucía in Tokyo. She
has also been a member of companies such as those of Rafael
Amargo, Paco Peña and Javier
Barón, and has trained and danced with the Farruco
family. Solo, she has danced as guest of the group ElBicho
and musicians like El Bola. Last year in Segovia, the time
came for her to premiere her own show, ‘Enlazados’,
part of which she displayed at Flamenco Pa'Tos 2009, sharing
a dream bill with Marina Heredia, Carmen Linares and Eva
Yerbabuena. Those bailes were a return trip, as poet Félix
Grande summed it up. But that road hasn’t been simple.
“The flamenco world is harder for an artist from the
outside, since flamenco isn’t an innate part of his
culture. He has to triple his effort to make up for lost
time”, she admits. So the struggle never ends.
She has her next “fight” at a tablao in Barcelona
and the following one in November on 92nd Street and…
in New York.
María Bermúdez
and Capullo de Jerez, Festival de Jerez 2010
(Photo Daniel
Muñoz) |
María Bermúdez,
'Chicana gypsy project', Festival de Jerez 2010
(Photo Daniel
Muñoz) |
Just having performed right on the other
coast of North America is María Bermúdez,
a peculiar Californian artist, who has Mexican roots and
registered in Jerez itself where “I’ve trained
as a bailaora and I’ve tried to learn flamenco in
depth”. A few years ago she appeared as guest bailaora
in ‘Septiembre’ by María del Mar Moreno,
and with her colleague Pelé de Navajita Plateá
as music director, she has started up her own project: Chicana
Gypsy Project. But she doesn’t just dance; she also
sings, from rancheras to soleares, with standards of blues
in between, thus joining all her destinations. Not even
cantaor Capullo
de Jerez was missing at the project’s presentation
this year at Festival de Jerez. But to reach that point
of integration hasn’t been simple, and as she herself
remarks, “we foreigners have to make many sacrifices
to get up close to flamenco, to get close to these people
who inspire us so much”.
Ariko Yara, Compás 4x4 (Photo Lolo Vasco-Bienal
de Sevilla 2008) |
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Just tell it to the Japanese, especially
the pioneer ones. Shoji
Kojima came to Spain in 1966, following a nearly
month-long journey which included the Trans-Siberian railway.
And during the decade he remained in Spain, he learned from
flamenco’s top artists at that time. Nicknamed ‘El
Gitano Japonés’ (‘The Japanese Gypsy’)
by Rafael Farina, he worked at tablaos in Cádiz and
Seville, in companies like that of Merche Esmeralda and
in festivals such as La Caracolá in Lebrija. Yoko
Komatsubara also plunged deeply into flamenco
in situ, becoming a student of maestro Enrique el Cojo and
a member of companies such as that of Rafael de Córdova.
Upon their return to Japan, both of them became not just
leading figures of flamenco dancing, but also its promoters.
That is why at present, as Kyoko Shikaze relates in the
report ‘Fifteen
thousand kilometers around the corner’, there
are some eighty thousand people learning flamenco in their
country. They usually complete their studies in Seville
and Madrid, but few stay, since Japanese flamenco is becoming
self-sufficient. All you have to do is take a glance at
the latest issue of the magazine ‘Paseo’ where,
although the cover is for Rafael Estévez and Nani
Paños, the central pages are occupied by bailaoras
like Ariko Yura, who has competed in contests like the City
of Ubrique Flamenco Contest and has even danced solo in
the series Compás 4x4 at Bienal de Sevilla 2008.
And the thing is, as Leilah says, “there’s more
and more of an opening for a foreigner to be able to do
flamenco professionally without judging his passport”.
