FREE PLATFORM. FLAMENCO ACCORDING TO…
Javier Latorre
Javier Latorre for Flamenco-world.com
December 16th, 2009
• FLAMENCO IS…
For certain, the richest and least explored
and developed form of expression in the world. The most
universal one and, at the same time, the most endogamous
and closed. The most respected one outside and the least
respected within. The common home of the greatest artists
and the greatest impostors. The one that can excite the
most and the one that can embitter the most. The one that
shares out the most life and the one that “kills the
most softly with its song”. A way of life? I think
that definition usually comes from those who aren’t
capable of rehearsing for two hours in a row (“because
the nice thing about flamenco is the improvisation”)
and from those who scorn or simply ignore other forms of
expression, or from those who, straight out, don’t
have a life outside of flamenco. Things happen which sometimes
make me think that flamenco might rather be a way of dying,
culturally speaking. It is also the huge lamp, the home
of very great genies. The realm of impressive exceptions
which confirm the rule. The paradise of upstarts, backed
sometimes by ignorance and others by the lack of interest
and negligence of those responsible for their care (politicians,
critics and the artists themselves). Even so, the most beautiful
thing in the world.
• WHAT CONCERNS YOU
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“Flamenco
is the richest and least explored and developed form
of expression in the world”
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I try to be a front-row spectator of what’s
around me, to feed on it and then capture it in the classrooms
and up on stage. I try to outdo myself in each class I teach
and in each show I create. My main concern is to leave a
legacy which helps others to be much better than me. To
show others the roads to travel, and what’s more important,
the roads they should never venture down. To explain to
those coming up that “flamenco flavor” is something
you either have or you don’t. That when you have it,
there’s no intellectual or technical evolution that
can strip you of it, but rather they enrich it. And when
you don’t have it, the only way to approach it is
precisely intellectual and technical evolution.
Sizing up my career at this point in time,
when I’ve spent 41 out of 46 years devoted to dance,
but when I think I have another 41 left, is complicated
and also pointless. I think those who have shared experiences
with me should be the ones who weigh it up or make that
judgment. I’m pathologically dissatisfied, although
I can assure you that my conscience is totally and absolutely
at ease, and that I have the utmost devotion in everything
I do.
At this moment, my life project and my
greatest hopes lie in my school in Córdoba, created
thanks to the involvement of Córdoba City Hall through
the Municipal Foundation of Córdoba’s Gran
Teatro, and above all, thanks to its director and “bosom
brother” Ramón López, without whom none
of this would have been possible.
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“The
daily contact with my students makes me happy, watching
them grow physically, technically and humanly”
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Moreover, I’ve just taken part in
Carlos Saura’s new film, ‘Flamenco Flamenco’,
which has been an experience and a huge privilege. I’m
also about to premiere in Japan (where I find myself as
I’m writing these lines) an adaptation of ‘La
Celestina’ for the Shoji Kojima Company, which I hope
can be seen in Spain next year. And I’m also in the
pre-production phase of what is going to be the new show
for my company, ‘El Duende y el Reloj’. A story
by Philip Donnier which narrates the Big Bang of compás
and wonderfully explains the different flamenco styles.
• WHAT MAKES YOU HAPPY
The daily contact with my students makes
me happy, watching them grow physically, technically and
humanly. I love the creative process of a show. Making,
like at this very moment, an exclusively Japanese dance
corps play the role of the prostitutes described by Fernando
de Rojas, or having a bailaor like Shoji Kojima, a real
institution in Japan, at the age of seventy and with an
impressive career, take the risk of playing the role of
La Celestina (The Procuress), nail it, and moreover, enjoy
every rehearsal like a beginner, is simply marvelous. In
fact, I get a big postnatal depression after each premiere.
I’m happy that my work is called
for by great artists and by small schools and I’m
happy to keep on enjoying myself equally in every area.
I’m happy about and I love the sweet
moment female baile is going through, and the past Festival
de Jerez was a concentrated example of that reality. Apart
from Yerbabuena, who to me is a big name, from Isabel Bayón,
Rafaela Carrasco, Belén Maya, Olga Pericet, Mara
Martínez, those two nasty creatures who are Mercedes
Ruiz and Rocío Molina - forgive me, all of you who
know that you’re in my thoughts - and many more, the
level of quality, variety of styles and esthetics and creativity
is very high.
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“I’m
happy about and I love the sweet moment female baile
is going through”
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I’m happy that those who love me
really love me, and those who don’t love me so much
respect me.
But above all my two joys make me happy,
one from Córdoba and the other from Cádiz,
my Ana and my Sol.
Being a “gachó” (Andalusian)
from Valencia and making a living at flamenco, which is
my passion, you can imagine that basically, I’m a
happy guy.
• WHAT WORRIES YOU
Since the year 2000, when I made my manifesto
public from this very platform, few of the things have changed
which worried me back then.
Culture is still the poor adopted sister
of general politics, and dance is still the last priority
of cultural politics. For instance, I’ll give you
a really clear example. The only program dedicated to dance
on public TV is “Mira quien c… baila”.
With the aggravating circumstances of premeditation, ill
intent, the cover of night, and with the worst of all, the
necessary complicity for the perpetration of crime by venerated
figures of our dance, which has been a terrible disappointment
to me. Thank goodness the only photogenic thing I have is
my voice.
At this rate, any day now we’ll see
La Bordiú and Ortega Cano as lead dancers of the
Ballet Nacional.
I’m also worried about the situation
of basic teaching. You can’t put the diploma without
experience in front of experience without a diploma. Legislation
should be passed in that sense, facilitating access to conservatories
for ex-professionals of dance who have experience to get
across, aside from obvious quality as artists. The first
thing an instructor must get across is passion, and you
can’t teach what you don’t know nor get across
what you haven’t felt.
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“I’m
worried about the two public companies, turned into
private companies in practice”
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I’m worried about the two public
companies, turned into private companies in practice, but
without risking their own money, of course, and without
having to account to anyone for quality or profitability.
I’m worried about the media’s
lack of criteria. The general public’s lack of education
and information. The general negligence towards dance. And
I’m worried about other things that there’ll
be time to comment on in the future.
• A COMPLAINT
A “quejío por siguiriya”
so that the same level of education is demanded from a dance
graduate as one in medicine.
And another for Unesco, whose ignorance
of flamenco is starting to be disgusting.
• A COMPLIMENT
A compliment with all the affection I dispose
of for those blessed foreigners who travel halfway around
the world, and sometimes all the way around, to enjoy our
stuff which is more and more theirs, and who are the ones
truly responsible for flamenco’s universality.
And another compliment for Festival de
Jerez, where I feel at home, and whose level of organization
and quality is growing every year.
• A LIE
The famous whopping lie, the one that “to
be flamenco you have to be …”. You have to be
Spanish, then you have to be Andalusian, then you have to
be a gypsy, then from a specific family… That’s
how you explain, among thousands of other mysteries, that
Tete Montoliú was Afro-American, obese and from New
Orleans, from the Montoliús Family on Bourbon Street,
to be specific.
• A TRUTH
Those who surround you at the moment of
truth, and those who couldn’t care less about how
you dance, how you teach and how you stage (pardon the expression).
My daughters.
• SOMETHING TO REMEMBER
My maestros, all of those who are in my
résumé and others who due to a lack of memory,
and not of gratitude, do not figure in it. Those who educated
me as an artist and as a person and those who I’ll
always be grateful to for making a vital stage in my life
a real pleasure.
To remember, that day at the Teatro Principal
in Valencia in 1979 when I saw the Ballet Nacional recently
created and directed by Antonio Gades. I’ll never
forget the excitement I felt throughout that show, nor the
sensation of wasted time and frustration-annoyance that
felt like getting punched by Tyson after spending 11 years
on stage, and realizing that I, the best bailaor in Valencia,
didn’t have the slightest idea about this.
One week later, I went to Madrid.
• A WISH
That one day, hopefully when I’m
still alive, it were normal in this country for a child,
and I stress the child part due to scarcity, to tell his
parents:
-Mom, Dad, I’ve decided that I want
to be a dancer when I grow up.
And for his parents to answer:
- Oh, my son, you don’t know how
proud we are of you!
• NOTES
How I love Tokyo! But it’s so far
away.
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