Do you think young bailaores nowadays are slaves to technique?
And unfortunately for many creatures, they’re really mistaken. Not all of us people are born with all capacities. We can say about someone what a pretty head they’ve got, their arms about another one, another one’s quickness and cleanliness... Not everybody is born to take possession of something. If you aren’t born with the capacity, for example, for virtuosity, in the end you dance dirty, you don’t have speed... you’re crashing into a wall and the rest of us are missing a lot of other pretty things you can offer us. And that’s what a lot of people don’t understand. Everyone wants to dance the same thing and not everyone can because we’re not equal. And right now I’m beginning to see that not everybody wants to do little kicks any more. There are people who are discovering that behind the kick you’re left empty if there aren’t other things to say. This change is making me really happy because there was a time when everything focused on that. There were people who used to work wonders and others who just made it halfway. You’d see that those people were phased out by time; they didn’t make it, they gave the sensation of inability. You’d come out of the theater or the tablao tense, when it shouldn’t be like that. You go to see an artform to enjoy it and, if possible, when you go to bed, you need to go on seeing those pictures, to dream about them and even wake up to them because they’ve made an impact on your soul. What you can’t do is come out tense and feeling like having a beer or lime-blossom tea to get relaxed. In my own case, a beer. I always have a beer after dancing. My mother used to say that beer doesn’t make you drunk but bends you down. It relaxes you. And when I see something like that, I’ve got to have a beer...
Matilde Coral says she always carries some tranquilizers with her in her pillbox and she takes “half a pill” at the theater when she sees dancing like that...
Ha ha ha ha. What I feel sorry about is that a lot of people think that because we’re a certain age, we talk like that. I don’t think the past was better. I think the past was one thing and the present has to be something else. What I do think is that not everything modern’s good, nor is everything old-style either. The concept of old-style isn’t the same as old-fashioned. People who dance old-style have merit, but those who dance old-fashioned don’t, since they’re out-dated. I never feel out-dated at any time; I feel at the time I’m at, but with my vision of flamenco. If I can do two pirouettes, I’m not going to settle for just one. If I do two broken turns I’m going to do them, since they’ve meant a lot of work for me, and I’m not going to do just a single one which is what used to be done. If I move my arms from behind because my arms start from behind, I’m not going to put my arm forward nor am I going to raise my shoulders so that it looks like I don’t have a neck. I’m going to use this pretty thing I have to offer. No matter how flamenco it is, I don’t feel like being the hunchback of Nôtre Dame. My body isn’t made for that; it’s made to display beauty, which is what an artform has to display. Besides, a woman I admire immensely, Manuela Carrasco, I can’t dance like her... thank God! I admire other bailaoras a great deal, but I couldn’t dance like them, thank goodness. That’s why there are names in art, in the art of baile, in that of painting... Why shouldn’t you like Picasso, Van Gogh and Degas? How joyous to have that entire palette of color in art!
Do you believe, as Victoria Eugenia upholds, that women have to show off their weapons for baile, instead of taking men’s ground?
Undoubtedly. A woman has cambric, her shoulders, hips, waist, regard... A woman has wealth from the waist up, which is how it used to be said that dancing was done and which has been lost in some. Careful; I of course won’t be the one to say that if on top of it you’re skilled from the waist down, then you’re well-rounded. The more complete you are, the greater you are. But just due to the simple fact you have good feet, good rhythm, good speed, doesn’t mean you have to blind everything else you have. On the contrary; you have to develop its potential and know how to enjoy it and say I do this, but on top of it I’ve got this other thing. What we can’t do is scorn or deprive others of what we have which is beautiful; on the contrary. The first thing I always do in my classes is to teach technique, because technique is the common thread to then make art. When you have the technique under control, you have to forget about it to develop art. Don’t forget your hip, waist, shoulder, hand, arm coordination... It isn’t even enough to have good arm movement if you have really ugly hands. The hand and arm coordination corresponds to two different joints and you have to show the pupil how to be coordinated with both things so that later on it’s innate when dancing. I really like to watch the greats dance and the less greats, because even the worst one has some good things. Even someone who gets away from the rhythm might have a pretty, unique gesture. That’s why I can’t understand how people who have the possibility to do a lot of pretty things settle for just one. Victoria Eugenia tells the truth; she’s a teacher through whose hands the best have passed. When people talk like that, you have to listen to them and not think they’re wrong because they’re at a certain age.
