- That?
As?
Hey!?
Lali Espósito, 31 years old, a meter and a half full of pure energy, stands in the middle of the stage after singing two songs surrounded by latex-clad dancers.
She alone at last in front of 50,000 people, her audience crazy about her, she overcomes a smile: "I really don't know what to say... and you have to leave me without speaking."
She just became the first woman of her generation to sell out a stadium in her country.
In a season in which Argentines fill every show as if there were no economic crisis and national artists break one record after another, hers is emotional: Lali, who started performing at the age of 10 and since then has not stopped build an artistic career that captivated South America, is at the top.
The last Argentine to sing on a soccer field had been none other than Mercedes Sosa, who in 1984 celebrated on the same one,
"I never imagined myself being present as it is," Lali told EL PAÍS on Thursday, four days after the concert in Buenos Aires.
“I always thought of smaller things, very realistic about what she wanted, what she was working on and what she wanted to achieve.
That connection with being in the present helped me not to lose myself in crazy hopes, but rather in working, in taking opportunities.
All of that brought me here."
She hasn't stopped: she had another presentation two days later and answers the phone while they do her makeup.
In one hour she will receive a tribute in the Legislature of the Argentine capital as an outstanding personality of culture.
“I am very, very from Buenos Aires,” she says.
“It is one of those recognitions that are modest, but it is an important day.
Recognizing me I think it is a way of recognizing thousands of children who grow up in this city without possibilities but with desires,
Before dancing wrapped in latex while the stage caught fire, conquering the Spanish-speaking world as an actress, raising flags with the feminist movement for the legalization of abortion and becoming an LGBT icon, Lali was a girl from the humble south of Buenos Aires. Aires who went to the castings by bus without an agency or representative.
She ended up becoming a banner of Cris Morena, the great producer of soap operas for adolescents.
Millions of Argentines and South Americans who grew up with the 21st century did so watching her on television: from the irreverent and funny girl in series like
Floricienta
and
Rincón de Luz
to the helpless teenager of
Teen Angels
, where she began her career as a singer forming pop groups.
Against the stereotype, she managed to build a career away from the shadow of the child star.
“I think what happens when you start as a child, and you have that pressure that your presence always works, is that as an adult you start to make decisions out of fear and not so much out of desire, of evolution,” he says.
“I saw it in a lot of colleagues.
I feel that, in my case, I don't know for what reasons, I was never afraid of going towards things that seemed different to me, evolutionary or that they were going to break my own schemes or the way in which others looked at me.
I never wanted to hold that girl that she was no longer.
I was being who she was at all times ”.
An image of the Lali Espósito concert, on March 4. Sony Music Argentina
He
Last December 18, Lali sang the Argentine anthem in the run-up to the World Cup final between Argentina and France at the Lusail Stadium.
She had gone to Qatar as a spectator and did not expect the offer.
Home videos of her getting ready showed her almost terrified, searching a mall for a dress for the occasion.
She is now about to present her fifth album,
Discipline
, after a half-year tour that had her going around the country.
“It marks the age of adulthood,” she says of the launch.
“It's a complete cut from the above.
It's me plus me.
A grown me, a much more concrete Lali, who knows what things she wants to talk about ”.
He says that the secret to keeping a career on for more than half of his life is work and sincerity: “When I was 22 I made a record of my age, when I was 26 I talked about what I felt then.
When taking acting projects the same thing happens to me: I choose things of different growth.
Now I don't have the feeling of 'it's finally happening to me', I just enjoy this super crazy, super big present.
I like that it is a result of my work and that of the people around me”.
That "I" that he describes has spoken to generations of Argentines.
On Saturday, in a packed stadium, adults and children danced, including parents who smoked leaning against the railing while watching their children.
Lali motivates, his story identifies, his energy is contagious.
In a break between the 30 songs she sang that night, she stopped to read the hundreds of posters fans brought her.
"Dad, because of Lali I became gay," said one that made the entire stadium burst into a single laugh.
The question, days later, is obvious:
- Do you feel relevant?
- I think, rather, I can be a mirror.
I have the camera and the loudspeaker to talk about issues that reach the ears of parents and grandparents so that they see that you are a happy person who can express yourself and that nothing determines you as a human being.
If that suits the people who feel accompanied by me, in the end it is that.
That is what art, music, cinema does.
That's what it's for.
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