Antonio Canales: "The audience for 'Sálvame' is shit"

The dancer is the new artistic ambassador of Villa Rosa, a temple of flamenco that reopens its doors after a year closed by Covid.

Now, he seeks to recover the essence of the old tablaos.

What is this new stage going to be like at Villa Rosa? I want to recover a temple, a flamenco cathedral, which has been in existence since 1911 and which I am very fond of.

I am very rigorous and I want to give it the character that a place like it deserves.

I want to do it the way it was done before, like the tablaos that the new generations don't know.

What news is there going to be? I want to give you that sacred thing that a tablao has: for example, nothing is served between one number and another so that the waiters don't bother you.

We have the cold room where the musicians and artists come up 10 minutes earlier so that the public can hear how they are tuning and see them through the windows.

This is how it was done before and a magical atmosphere is created.

The Villa Rosa team are all first-class artists, there is no filler.

You say that dance can be the best of mothers and the worst of stepmothers. If you don't love her like a mother, she won't treat you like a mother.

Dance is a very hard world: it is beauty and pain.

I am now in my twilight, but to get to the top you have to be dancing since you were 7 or 8 years old.

You have to sacrifice a lot of things: you can't ride a bike or horse, ski or skate. In case you get injured? Yes, and because you develop your muscles in another way.

I ask the dancers: "How much do you want to give to the dance?"

"I, my life."

That is what Farruquito, Sara Baras and all those who are now stars have answered me.

Do you have to take a vow of chastity to get to the top? A lot.

People think that everything is a party... No, no.

Almost all the stars have taken care of themselves with a lot of colacao,

lots of milk and lots of rest.

The days are endless. But you have indeed broken that vow of chastity, haven't you? Yes, because as Antonio, the dancer, used to say, old people become shameless.

I already made my career as such.

Now I direct and I am a choreographer.

You can't fight against time or want to appear an age that doesn't belong to you.

That can be done in the cinema or in the theater, but in dance it is impossible.

Dance is the body, the bones, the movement... It's a challenge to gravity and, if you start to weigh a lot, it's very difficult to meet that challenge.

And that's when you say, it's over. You said that the flamingos killed each other.

Is there a lot of envy? Since you've been in the National Ballet, whenever they give you a role, there are three interpreters to do it.

You can love the other interpreter very much,

but you're hoping that you'll catch the flu so you can dance. And the corps de ballet will think the same of the soloists. Yes, they'll want them to fall.

It is unavoidable.

A dancer's career ends at thirty-something.

I encourage my students to study a career so that they have another life.

Dance can become a martyrdom when you see yourself in the mirror and you don't like it.

You can fall into depression if you have nothing else. Has looking in the mirror ever happened to you? The mirror has been my friend and my enemy.

I have been through some very terrible times in my life, as you well know.

The mirror lives with the dancers constantly because from the moment you get up you have to see yourself in a mirror in class.

When you begin to see that you can no longer do 10 pirouettes, but four, and you see 16-year-olds as flowers,

there are many dancers who end up with depression and a very bitter life.

Why did they fire you from 'Sálvame'? They didn't fire me, but they didn't renew my contract. They assure that of the 82 days of the contract you were only 13. I worked when they wanted and they called me.

What seemed inappropriate to me were the ways in which they did it.

To say goodbye they could have told me separately and not do a circus. It was live, right? I've also fired artists, but I don't tell them when I go on stage.

I don't go in front of the audience and say, "Now I'm kicking you out."

It was a public mockery.

As they did so, I publicly said what they were suffering from: that they have a shitty audience and that even Turkish soap operas beat them. Are you an ungovernable scoundrel? Yes, Antonio Canales.

Antonio Gomez,

the one with the NIF is a normal kid.

We are two.

Inside me there is another Canales who is an ungovernable scoundrel and who drives the other crazy.

But it has also saved him many times.

When Gómez couldn't get up, Canales would come and tell him: "Up! I'd rather be dead than simple." You've confessed that you came to touch hell and fell into gambling and drugs. people who can leave.

When you're down there, you have to ask for help because if you don't, you'll get into the black hole and it's more difficult to get out.

When you're down and have no self-esteem or desire to live, you should scream for help and let yourself be helped.

The best medicine is a million pampering.

My parents, my brothers and sisters have died and I have gone through terrible times, but when I fell into all that apathy it was out of love, disappointment and loneliness.

That is the worst disease I fear.

Atrocities are done for love, one gets to kill and commit suicide.

Love is the most beautiful, but the most terrible.

You have to be careful because that's what led me to not want to live and to feel depressed. Is it hard to accept bisexuality in this country? A lot.

Coming out of the closet is accepted.

But, when it's not coming out of the closet, but saying that you like fish and meat, they think you're addicted.

There has not yet been a politician or a footballer who says that he is bisexual.

I think it is the most beautiful balance a person can have.

I don't like all men or all women.

I am the father of three children and I have loved Malena for 25 years more than anyone else in the world.

But I have fallen in love with a man and I have loved him for 10 years. And now,

Are you with a man or a woman? With a beautiful man, but I can't say more.

I encourage people to fall in love after 50. It is when love is best experienced with patience and maturity.

With devotion but keeping the spaces without those stupid attacks.

A fuck can last two seconds, but it can also last a whole day, which you can't get in your 20s. A whole day?

Well, yes, you are in good shape! [Laughs] With their pauses and caressing you with their eyes.

Before giving a kiss with the lips, first kiss with the eyes. In your life, what has been the meanest moment? When I forgot that I was Antonio Canales and I went with my boyfriend to suck him off at the beach.

I thought he wasn't following me anymore.

The petty one was he who had everything prepared and sold me.

On a nudist and gay beach in Sitges I'm not going to take my boyfriend to scratch his back.

I didn't realize it and I thought they had already forgotten about me.

I have that moment nailed like a thorn and I don't forgive myself.

All to win 12,000 euros.

If he had asked me for them, I would have given them to him.

I didn't even want to see it.

It was very hard.

He had it all planned.

Spain has forgiven me for that tragedy and has filled me with love again.

"That's okay, man. Who hasn't sucked her boyfriend's churra?".

At that time I wanted to die, but now it makes me laugh a little.

As my father used to say: "Suck whoever you want, but don't let the whole of Spain see you".

They are dedicated to mistreating and insulting each other.

I once went to the Senate on behalf of all dance and there came a time when they began to argue between two and I'm not going to say who they were... Who were they?

That is public. They were the PP with the PSOE, who started arguing and forgot about me.

We'll see.

I went with a huge vade mecum and they argued without paying attention to the problems of the dancers to quote because we need a special regime.

They waste time without solving problems such as electricity or immigration, which brings a lot of problems. Do many immigrants arrive? Anyone can enter here and roam freely.

When I go to Japan and other non-EU countries, I have to have a work contract and, when I finish, they put me on the fucking street.

Not here.

If you come to work,

welcome, but if your contract ends, you go back to your country.

Why do we have to be a host country?

I'm half gypsy and the last racist there can be, but not so stupid.

Who invents those laws that one can stay here to live because they want?

One thing is the free movement of the EU and another, that of African countries or wherever they come from, because if they come they have to bring an employment contract.

What do we want people standing here for?

In my town square, there are 20,000 immigrants.

I'm not going to say their race, but they're on their feet all day.

They will accuse you of being racist and xenophobic. I am not.

But when you go to a country, you have to come to work.

Where is your employment contract?

Why don't you go to the police to ask for their ID?

And if they don't have a job, expel them to their country.

Who allows you to be in my country without working?

So that we have to be giving them the help that belongs to ours and that our children have more complicated work.

They don't allow me in other countries. How is your lawsuit with the Junta de Andalucía for not choosing you as director of the Flamenco Ballet? In the end, we didn't want to go to court.

I didn't want to get into lawsuits.

Then the King gave me the Fine Arts Medal award and the Chairman of the Board also apologized that it was not fair.

I was very upset, but I don't know how not to love. Would you introduce yourself again? Not anymore.

I now live very happily in the countryside with my partner and my cows, my chickens, my horses.

I choose the work that I feel like doing.

And what I have earned on television I have not earned even in 10 years directing the National Ballet.

It has been the prize of my career.

Now I do what I really want.

I did not expect that. The Andalusian Government is drawing up a law on flamenco, what do you think? It makes me very sad because flamenco is a World Heritage Site, but here neither the Andalusian Government nor the Ministry take it seriously of Culture.

They are not experts in the matter.

There is a lot of ignorance.

We should have a National Flamenco Ballet, a flamenco museum and a library... If the French or the Americans had flamenco, they would sell flamenco hamburgers. El Niño de Elche complained that the Andalusian PSOE is the one that determines what It's flamenco Marca España He's a groundbreaking person, I've been too.

Maybe we are not politically correct.

What happens when someone arrives at Tourism is that ignorance and cronyism mean that the face we give is not the real one.

What they do has nothing to do with the Spain brand but with the friend brand.

So, both El Niño de Elche and many flamencos are left speechless. Loquillo defines a rock star by the number of enemies he has.

How many do you have? As many as friends.

Now I'm like one

and I have 60,000 followers who cheer me on in the networks.

But I have 60,000 others who don't like me.

The more enemies you have, it will be for a reason.

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• Articles Ana del Barrio