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Eva Yerbabuena
.
Frankfurt, 1970. The dancer and choreographer premieres the show 'Al como tú' on May 6 at the Jerez Flamenco Festival.
Her 17-year-old niece Ella Garry will take her on stage with her.
Those who have seen the rehearsals agree: emotion assured.
How will its premiere at the Festival de Jerez? I am with the same enthusiasm as when I premiered for the first time. It will be very special for the 25 years of the Festival, which are fulfilled in this edition, and for everything that is happening with the pandemic. There is a very strong sentimental charge. In this coronavirus crisis, are governments mistreating culture? I do not like the word mistreatment. Politicians quote you, you talk to them, they listen to you, yes, but it's like the song: pure theater. All the flamenco professionals have joined [in the Unión Flamenca association], but the solutions have not come. And why are we like this? The fault is not only the politicians, beware. The pandemic has made us realize that artists are also guilty of this crisis in flamenco. Why artists? We have never bothered to unite.We have been very individualistic and we have not worried about regulating and dignifying this art as a job. Now we pay the consequences.
Do you request more aid? Yes, we are trying to have direct aid because the situation in flamenco is very screwed up. The great figures may be in a more advantageous position, but the rest ... No, that is not the case and I want to make it clear . I am a businesswoman and I have a limited company; it is a responsibility. The job of an entrepreneur is to do things properly: and if a person has to be insured, I can't do it for just one hour, what if something happens to him along the way? Nor can I register a person as a warehouse worker because he is actually a flamenco artist. This has happened, I do not say in all tablaos, but in many yes. And there are also the payments in
black
money
. Of course. I am not worth the excuse that there is a businessman who says that an artist wants to charge in
black
because he is receiving a small
payment
. What if the tablao catches fire and someone burns? What do we do with the
pay
? If you are charging, I will call another person who can register it. But there has been no desire on the part of the businessman or the artist. It's not just the politicians; They have ignored a bit. What is the solution? We want things to be regularized. As freelancers and entrepreneurs we pay taxes, but flamenco art is not dignified as a job; Not even the family itself believes that this is a job! They believe that it is a continuous party and that you live in scandal, traveling all over the world. No sweetie. This is very hard work. I'm leaving my house, I leave my two daughters and I don't see them. The figures have taken a step forward with the Unión Flamenca association, but they have also criticized you. Yes, they have criticized us. There are those who think that we have come together to manage, but here there is no manga or there is a 'blow'. Unlike,we have put money to be able to constitute this. Who says it has a lot of lack of information. My concern from minute one is to dignify this as a job and that my daughter does not have to feel harassed at school because they tell her 'your parents are artists or artists'. Well no, it's the same as if your father is a judge. What do you mean not? My mother is a choreographer, she has a company, and one career is as serious as another. It never ends. The laws change to the judges and they have to go looking and evolving; and us, the same. Techniques and everything change; learning never ends here. In other countries, theaters have been closed longer than in Spain, yes, but in France and Germany, artists are not suffering as we are here. Flamenco is an Intangible Heritage of Humanity, but artists,Those of us who keep flamenco alive are not. Is the flamenco sector thinking of going on strike? We are watching because we do not complain for pleasure. The tablaos are closed because they lived off tourists, and they have not bothered to encourage within Spain that people do not see it as something for tourists. They do an important job because, when a bailaora leaves the conservatory, she must put theory into practice. It is not that of the dark dump of the dance that is sometimes thought. Yes, there is a lot of ignorance about tablaos. Yes. The second tablao I stepped on was that of Carmen Amaya in Montjuic, in the Pueblo Español. They did an interview with me and they asked me what I wanted to achieve and I replied that 'whoever eats and is drinking stop doing it' during the show. In a theater, nobody eats or drinks.I would be 17 years old and I still think the same. I am not against anyone. The tablaos are very necessary because they feed many families, but we all have to unite and regularize. A regularization has already been made for tablaos and who has fulfilled it? All the world? No ... Very few. Will the pandemic teach us anything? I don't know, honestly. I see a lot of desperation and a lot of aggressiveness. I don't know if it's going to teach us or if it's going to make us worse. The saddest thing is that a person who dedicates himself 24 hours a day to playing the guitar, studying cante, dance, flamenco ... has to leave this job and go to the countryside, to a fish shop or to clean, that it is no disgrace. I think they have once reproached her for not being a feminist. Yes, many times. When they tell me 'is that you with the feminists',I answer that I am neither a macho nor a feminist, I am a woman. There are aspects with which I agree and others with which I do not. So clear. There are things a man makes me cringe at and I need him to be a man. Or is it that women do not mistreat and harass? If they tell me what equality I demand, it is clear to me: that every woman who wants to be a housewife, which is the most difficult job in the world, has her salary, double pay, vacations ... Everything that a person has that study at the University. I do not agree that a woman earns less than a man in the same job. How am I going to be? But if we ask for equality, may there be equality for everything. Should an artist be a member of a military cause? It depends for what. If you side with a politician and it is for the good of all, then let's go. Then there are those who are afraid, it is like that. To me,I do not care to sit with whoever is governed now, because there are artists who are in soup kitchens and helped by their relatives. I am not going to talk to anyone for the benefit of me and the others who give them. No, I've never been like this. Is flamenco on the right or on the left? It belongs to the world; neither from the right, nor from the left, nor from the center. It belongs to no one. Like the painting or a painting by Picasso. Flamenco must be something that unites, not that separates. And not because you are a payo do you sing badly, and because you are a gypsy you do it well. There are gypsies around the world who neither dance, nor play, nor sing. What inspires you? I'm going to go a lot to the past. I like to look back, I am a very emotional person, I like what moves me and it doesn't have to be just flamenco. If I go to see theater I need him to make me feel. If I go to the Prado Museum or the Reina Sofía,I stop before a painting that tells me something. I don't understand painting, but I can't take my eyes off it. It happens to me with everything: fashion, clothes ... I am not a person of trends but of necessity, very intuitive. They have always told me 'you can't forget where you come from'. If we stop looking back, we disappear. How has being the daughter of Andalusian immigrants influenced you in Germany? Everyone has the right to live fairly well, to know the whole world, to travel, to be able to eat, to dress ... Do you understand racism? No, I am not racist at all. I have had the opportunity to travel and no one should die without doing it and learning about customs from other countries. At first, they seem very different, but then there are many similarities. But when traveling, I realize that we live in paradise. When did you see that dancing was his thing? I did not see it,it's curious. I never thought of being an artist. As a child, I used to love putting on clothes that weren't mine: Astrakhan's grandmother's coat, jewelry, and looking in the mirror. But I never told my parents 'I want to dance' or 'I want to be an artist'. My aunt Encarnita, who died at the age of 29, always commented 'this girl has something, you have to take her to a dance school'. And when she died, my mother decided to fulfill her wish. I was 11 years old and I began to learn the rumbas and sevillanas in Los Ogíjares [a municipality in Granada]. He formed his own company in 1998, at just 28 years old. Since then, he has choreographed a dozen award-winning shows. Never in my life could I imagine it because I was also shy and sickly. But everything that I have not spoken out of shyness I have done with dancing.Movement is the most primitive, we move before we can speak. With what you know now, what would you say to the Eva that was beginning? I would congratulate him because he was brave. I have also discovered that in another life I would possibly like to study the psychology of movement. It's something that fascinates me. Analyze how, through movement, you can communicate and get to know a person. Are the silences danced? Yes, silence is danced, felt and cried. It is very important in dance and I like it more and more. There are artists who are told 'there is silence and no one moves' and that creates brutal anxiety for them. That tires more than 15 minutes doing feet. Without doing anything and standing still, they must make you feel and you have to project. It is the most difficult. An artist's ego must be ... Sometimes it can come out,but the ego is the most destructive for an artist and for any person. Ego and pride are the worst disease, apart from envy. There are those who think that, to be an artist, you have to be a madman, a bohemian or a self-centered man. And it is not like that. We confuse.
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