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María Pagés . Seville, 1963. After 30 years touring the world with her company, the bailaora now runs with her husband, the Moroccan hispanista El Arbi El Harti, the Fuenlabrada Choreographic Center, a beacon for dance in the 'postcovid' era.

How do you deal with confinement? With a lot of activity, even if it seems like a contradiction. At the María Pagés de Fuenlabrada Choreographic Center we are designing what the future will be like. Now there are many uncertainties, doubts and concerns. We have never experienced such a situation. Concerts and shows have been suspended, how are artists going to get out of this crisis? Performing spaces must be vindicated so that they remain open because dance and flamenco are living arts that must be performed on stage. That idea seems to be drawn that technology is going to be the great substitute for arts such as dance, but I neither see nor want a flamenco canned in technology. Contact with the public and that experience of attending a live flamenco show, skin to skin, is not replaced by technology. The scenic spaces are more than two thousand years old, we have suffered other pandemics in humanity and they continue there. The Government has not been very receptive to the demands of the cultural sector. We live in complicated times and if they are not up to it we will demand. The responsibility for culture falls on many institutions and they all have to work together to make a strong culture. But that unity is not perceived. I have faith in it. The problem is that we have not known how to create a strong cultural network, regardless of whether each political structure of municipalities, governments and autonomies works. Culture is the mirror of society and all of us, when looking at ourselves, recognize ourselves, even with the diversity and wealth that this country has. We demand a state pact on culture. Up to now, we have had other priorities and it is clear that here it is not like in other countries, where culture has been considered of first necessity, such as education or health. Should culture be on a scale similar to education and healthcare? Of course. I have no doubt; it must be so. It is true that there are other priorities and now it is physical health, but that does not mean that there is another health, emotional health, where the arts and one's identity are fundamental; not only of bread the man lives! Humanity has given priority to the economy and that is why the planet is going to waste our time and we see that the culture is too precarious and unstructured and it collapses in the face of any crisis or difficulty. Dance, within the arts, is one of the latest. We haven't been able to go on tour for three months and, if you don't act, you don't eat. He was born in a non-Flemish crib. His father, a mathematician from Ibiza, and his mother, a Sevillian businesswoman, yes, my father's origins are in Ibiza, according to family legend. My mother's are in Catalonia, but she lived in Seville and is still here. My family was not dedicated to the arts or flamenco, but she started dancing at the age of 4. Yes, I started going to classes at that age. At the age of 15 I went to Madrid to work with companies and at 16 it was my first international tour to Japan and the former Soviet Union. I started very young, although I looked very old; I have always been very dedicated. She worked with maestro Antonio Gades. It emerged when I worked for the movie 'Carmen' by Saura. I passed some tests and met Gades. When he saw that I could be part of the cast of his company, he called me and I was with him for a couple of years. How has flamenco changed in these years? It has evolved a lot because it has that ability to transform, to influence and to be influenced .. It has that hospital faculty; I love that idea of ​​welcoming. It is an enormously rich art that begins in the most marginal places of a society, but then goes on to the big stages. However, there is always a resistance on the part of a social sector not to recognize flamenco as an art. It is a fight that all flamingos carry out. As if it were a minor art? Yes, there are people who refuse to value it and prefer it to stay in that well of minor art that always enters through the back of the stately houses. It saddens me and saddens me to say it, but it must be done and that each one be taken for granted and reconsider. Can there be some classism in that conception? Of course. As it exists, it must be verbalized and denounced because flamenco is in the big theaters. And even more because it is ours and we should praise it. Outside of Spain is it valued more? Meeting everything. For decades, there are artists who were on big stages and were acclaimed. But he forgets. It is essential that all the levels that make up culture: society, artists, managers and politicians, we are able to put this great art in its place. Your idea of ​​the flamenco it welcomes is at the opposite end of the thesis that it claims a pure art.They are the two sides of a popular and traditional art. Both faces are necessary and can coexist. Conservatives want to preserve classical flamenco and others are in creation, evolution and transformation because it is a living art that must reflect social changes. We see a painting by Goya and perceive what history was like at that time, life ... With flamenco it is the same. You defend a vindictive flamenco. Yes, dance and flamenco have a social mission. Dancing requires a lot of effort; It is a job based on respect. The arts help cultivate emotions. And that can help children and adolescents. That social mission, does it mean that you have to show affiliations or political phobias? I understand politics as the one responsible for managing society. Politicians are at the service of society and we choose them. We live in a democratic system in which not all of us think alike and there must be discussion. Culture must be above politics: it cannot be that a theater changes director because the party in government changes. Culture is sometimes at the mercy of political change and it should not be. Imagine that the health changed continuously; There would be no strong healthcare system to withstand this crisis. What lessons do you draw from this pandemic? Everything is ephemeral and you have to be aware of it. The pandemic is the result, not as punishment because I do not believe in it, but it is due to mismanagement of nature. We were not doing well because we cannot think only about economic enrichment and forget the rest; that has its consequences. If we are like this it is because we have gone in this direction; it is not accidental. What is happening must make us reconsider, like all crises. What do we want the future to be like? What planet do we want to leave? A setback is being seen in democracies already tired and mistreated by all. Do you think that nothing will be the same? Yes, the future is not going to be as we have known it until now. Neither society, nor the arts, nor culture will be the same. We must revisit everything that has not worked in our country. We have been in democracy for more than 40 years and we have not known how to create solid cultural policies and now, that we are in a very precarious situation, we realize it. What work does she do, together with her husband El Arbi El Harti, at the Choreographic Center? With this crisis, she plays a fundamental role for the new generations. It is a meeting place and reflection to try that the dance, as art, is valued and dignified. It is what corresponds to us after 30 years traveling the world with the company. Dance is very much in need of these spaces of investigation and encounter. The center is a space that has rehearsal rooms, a room to create, a residence for resident companies ... it is a place that welcomes flamenco and all dance disciplines. He is in Fuenlabrada, which has shown great complicity and commitment to the arts, dance and flamenco.

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