Patricia Guerrero, dance without limit or gender: “Who says what flamenco is?”

Patricia Guerrero is the daughter of a contemporary flamenco, the one of her time.

The one that is based on tradition, but with its gaze and restlessness set on scenic arrangements that are difficult to label.

If she mentions the phrase that she says on her website “the most contemporary flamenco dancer”, she shrugs her shoulders and smiles.

National Dance Award 2021 in the performance modality, the Granada-born bailaora is experiencing a busy June: the presentation of her show

on the 9th and 10th of this month at the Teatro Real and the premiere of her new work,

this Monday at the Mont-de-Marsan Flamenco Art Festival (France), are an example of abundant activity, but also chosen.

"I've never liked going to a place that doesn't belong to me," she says.

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On the ground, her conversation is clear and devoid of pose, revealing the tranquility and confidence of someone who feels satisfied.

On stage, her movement destroys canons with the onslaught of a sandstorm.

“When people ask me, but are you flamenco?

Well, of course, until I die.

My movement is free and has no limit or gender, no art does”.

She confesses having been clear from a very young age about what he did not want;

for example, training in a conservatory.

“I was seeing something that didn't interest me, that wasn't natural,” she explains.

Numerous private schools in Granada to which her father took her on a motorcycle, so as not to miss a single class, were the ones that drew the impeccable technique from which Guerrero departs from her towards less orthodox places.

“I have only been to contemporary dance classes once, in Berlin,

And it was the hardest thing I've ever done.

Accustomed to being one of the first, there I saw that I did not arrive, I was a defenseless croquette.

So I said to myself: 'Patri, nothing's wrong, in this you're a potato'.

Because I don't have the technique.

In flamenco we only touch the ground with our feet, vertically.

But contemporary dance fills me with sensations that help me in the freedom of movement”, he says.

Patricia Guerrero, in a rehearsal of 'Deliranza' on June 8 at the Central Theater in Seville.MMG

In his long career despite his 32 years, the belief about what he did want has also reigned.

For example, moving to Seville, where he currently resides, and working with greats like Mario Maya and Rubén Olmo.

With the first, at the age of 15, she became the youngest bailaora at the Center for Flamenco Studies and her company;

With the second, she entered in 2011 as prima ballerina in the Ballet Flamenco de Andalucía, then directed by Olmo, and she met him again, already in the National Ballet of Spain in 2021, incarnating La Bella Otero.

“I've surrounded myself with people I wanted and I've been lucky enough to get it, not only with figures from baile, but also from cante like Arcángel or Mayte Martín.

I am made up of everything these people have added to me.”

Patricia Guerrero's career is one of those in which work makes you climb little by little, a moderate ascent in which each result seems a prudent consequence of the previous, without flying carpets, only perseverance and belief in one, as vehicle and retaining wall.

“I have never been in a hurry and I think that has been very good.”

The awards have surprised her working and unexpectedly.

The Giraldillo for the best show for

(2016) at Seville's Bienal de Flamenco that year began a journey of many.

The 2021 National Dance Award for the best performance, one of the last.

”He caught me in Vladivostok on tour with my company.

There was eight hours of time difference and when they told me that the phone would not stop ringing, I was dancing

(2018).

At 11 at night I took it and ended up crying with emotion.

Then I called my mother, who told me 'come on, Patri, don't lie to me'.

It was very exciting and it came at a very good time.”

He speaks of his parents on several occasions, they resonate key in his professional career: "They have been and continue to be support and discipline for me."

Also shelter or place for resetting.

“When I get overwhelmed with a production, I usually call my mother and talk to her for a while to clear my mind, although when I'm in a loop with something artistic, it's hard for me to get out of it.

It's a bit obsessive and when I sleep, I dream of rhythms, scenes, movements…”.

Rehearse without a mirror

Perhaps for this reason, due to the appropriation of rest that Guerrero's creation ends up profaning, the bailaora's new work,

, takes place in a dream crossed by a creative process.

The hours of rehearsal, the hits and misses and even "that part of mourning that a creator must face when he discards a material that he wanted, but it didn't quite come together", give shape to this show that has its absolute premiere this Monday in the Festival de Arte Flamenco de Mont-de-Marsan and which will later step on the Festival de Música y Danza de Granada (July 8) and the XXII Bienal de Flamenco de Sevilla (September 14).

“It has been one of the longest creation processes I have had, it started a year and a half ago.

And I wanted to see what physical and emotional limits around movement I could reach.”

To do this, tells the bailaora who took butoh (Japanese contemporary dance) classes with Coco Villareal: “When you couldn't take it anymore, I told you 'let it go',

Delusional

is composed of other first times.

Never before had the creator surrounded herself with a dance troupe of seven performers.

She, too, had not created alimón and from the beginning, together with the musicians, in such a close way.

"That's why

has such a unique sound and movement."

But this piece is also made of that dance gospel that accompanies it from the

and that includes the stage director Juan Dolores Caballero,

as a stage conductor, "he adds me, strips prejudices and lands me."

His routine homily also includes an unusual event in the work of a dancer: working without a mirror.

"I discarded it years ago when I realized that my reflection, rehearsing, working, did not always return the feeling I was experiencing and it misled me."

Hundreds of notebooks ―“like yours, with a spiral, but without lines”, he says― and a somewhat compulsive writing ―“I can have twenty different structures of the same show”― are incorporated into a creative discourse that has given him more satisfaction than obstacles.

She is oblivious to criticism, “because I don't pretend that what I do is liked by everyone”, she is also a staunch defender of her work.

“Once I met a journalist who told me that he hadn't understood my proposal because I wasn't Flemish.

'Who says it and what is flamenco', I asked him.

They are archaic and stagnant concepts that do not make sense to me.

Mont-de-Marsan, the city of three rivers and a Flemish festival

Capital of the Landes, a region of southwestern France outlined by forests and seas, Mont-de-Marsan attracts visits in summer and qualities that present it as an idyllic city.

Bathed by three rivers, it is also home to one of the most interesting international flamenco festivals.

Small, perhaps, because it takes place in just six days (from June 27 to July 2);

but with a certain intention and a clear programming criteria, between avant-garde and traditional flamenco.

Since it was founded in 1989, promoted by the region and the French politician Henri Emmanuelli, prominent and emerging figures have passed through its facilities.

In this edition,

, by Patricia Guerrero, is the main bet of the show, which is co-producer of the show and led to a residency in which the bailaora and her team worked for a week.

“We all lived in the same house and those were very intense days of creation.

At night, around the fire, proposals kept coming out, which would not have been given if each one was in his place.

The show has evolved a lot.

Along with this work, there will also be others by Eva Yerbabuena, Eduardo Guerrero, Lucía la Piñona and Rafael Campallo.

Workshops, free shows and guitar and flamenco singing recitals complete its offer.

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