Noemí Luz, flamenco dancer, dotdotdot dance
Londoner Noemí Luz trained at Elmhurst Ballet School and Central School of Ballet before moving to Seville to pursue flamenco and study with her mentor, Yolanda Heredia. She has performed at traditional flamenco venues in Andalusia, including Tablao Arenal, La Casa de la Guitarra and Peña la Perla de Cadiz, and choreographed for various shows. In 2014, she co-founded the London-based flamenco company dotdotdot dance with two other British dancers, Magdalena Mannion and Yinka Esi Graves. Their presentations of original choreography have included curating a Wild Card evening for the Lilian Baylis Studio in London in May 2016.
Noemí’s solo work includes The Ugly Truth, which she presented at Coetani Festival of Experimental Flamenco in Athens in November 2016, and she is currently working on Memory Clinic, a new project that addresses the issues faced by people affected by dementia. She chats to Liz Arratoon from Seville, where for the past decade she has been spending part of the year. dotdotdot dance will perform i come to my body as a question during Sampled at Sadler's Wells in London on 3 and 4 February and at the Lowry in Manchester on 23 and 24 February 2017.
The Widow Stanton: Did you always want to be a dancer? Noemí Luz: I did, yes. I started ballet when I was two and a half. My grandmother, Peggy Ingram, was a professional ballet dancer so she encouraged my sister and me to go to ballet. No pressure or anything, but we started at a very young age. My sister went into horse riding but I just got completely hooked. Also, my dad, Alexander Ingram, is a conductor. He was in the theatre a lot so I was able to see a lot of ballet as a child as well and I was just completely in love with it and passionate about it.
How did you first become aware of flamenco? I went to Elmhurst Ballet School, a ballet boarding school, when I was 11. When we there we had like, one flamenco class and I sort of got the bug really. I always knew; it was always there in the background because my grandparents had been to Spain on holiday and they brought back Carlos Saura's flamenco videos, VHS in those days. As a child I would watch these videos over and over again. When I went to their house it would be like, ‘Please can I watch the flamenco video again?', so it was kind of always there.
Can you put your finger on what you loved about it? I suppose if I'm honest as a child what you see is these beautiful women in these beautiful spotty dresses in bright colours dancing around, and it just looks like the most beautiful thing. That was definitely a part of it, but as one matures obviously that shifts and really the magical thing about flamenco and being a flamenco dancer is that you're not just a dancer, you're a musician as well. So you really have to engage on many levels as an artist; you're not just repeating choreography ever. It's very much about the sounds that you're making as a musician, how you're relating to the live musicians in the moment and also finding your own personality, because in flamenco it's nothing like classical ballet where you're told exactly how you're supposed to look. Flamenco is all about finding your own way of doing things. In a way it's very liberating.
So is there quite a lot of improvisation? Improvisation is an interesting word because it can mean many different things. In contemporary dance improvisation means something very different. I suppose in traditional flamenco yes there is improvisation but there's also the set code and structure, so you improvise but knowing this code and structure; there's a rhythmical code and an order that things go in. You're able to be free within that structure. There's a lot of spontaneity but at the same time you know it's not just completely free to do whatever.
Did you go to a school in Seville? No. I just looked online to find out what was happening but in the end I just went. I was 20. I didn't really have a plan; I knew about some of the academies but I was like, 'I'm just going to go and try the different academies'. So I turn up, young and… frightened [laughs] having my cultural shock experience, but within the second week I'd found my mentor, Yolanda Heredia, just in some warehouse studio, down a back street. Some woman had said: "I think you'll really like this class. You should come along." So I went and watched and completely fell in love with the teacher. It was like an enlightenment moment where you realise where your path is supposed to lead all this time, an aha! moment. So my path was quite focused in that very early on I found my teacher and I would do general class with her but we also ended up doing private… it became coaching, sort of an apprenticeship in a way.
How long did it take before you had some level of proficiency? The thing is with flamenco it's such a vast art form. There's so much to learn that you never stop studying. It's always more, more, more, more. The more you learn, the more you realise there is to know and it just keeps going and going, which is why it's addictive in a way. It was very hard in the beginning getting the ballet out of my body and understanding this very different sensation. Ballet is very up and airy and light, and flamenco is opposite, sort of down and heavy and connected to the earth. So it was really difficult at the start to get that ballet out of my body and loosen up.
I think the first show I did was after a year of being in Spain… a gig, we're not talking theatre or anything, we're talking some sort of run-down bar, you know, illegal, underground, a bit dirty and sort of, ‘Will we earn enough from the door to buy ourselves a drink afterwards, kind of thing'. [Laughs]
As a British dancer, how were you accepted? This is the funny thing. Everyone has a different experience of this. As a foreigner it's quite a challenge to pluck up the courage to even try to pursue this, an art form that is culturally not your own though it may feel that it is. People don't realise how many foreigners there are living in Spain dancing, playing guitar, singing, through all levels up to professionals. We've all had to encounter this, this… It really depends on your attitude as to how you deal with these kind of situations.
I'd say there's a lot of prejudice still and resistance to the fact that somebody foreign could understand this art form that's very embedded in the culture of this specific place, but at the same time gradually it opens up and there are now very well-known artists who are from the States, from Canada, from all over the world. There are some amazing Japanese flamenco dancers, but funnily enough I feel there may even be a bit more resistance outside of Spain than inside of Spain. When I perform in the UK people are very disappointed when they find out you're not Spanish. After they've seen you, you know, it bursts their bubble.
All art forms needs to evolve and we are at an interesting moment in flamenco because it's that question of, 'Well, actually, all of these foreigners really connect to this art form.' It has something completely universal that goes beyond words, but at the same time there are some cultural elements that are really important for it to feel flamenco. The key is having really spent time living in Spain and absorbing it and understanding it and understanding how the people here relate to each other, which is all in there.
Does the constant impact have an effect on your body? The footwork? It all depends on your technique. Classical ballet has helped give me a base of knowledge about correct technique, though it is very different. It depends on your body type as well, how you carry yourself, your posture, tension, relaxation, but in theory it shouldn't affect you.
Let's talk about dotdotdot; how did you meet the others? I met Yinka in Seville a few years before we got together because she moved there from Madrid. I'd known her through Yolanda because she'd been taking classes with her as well. Magdalena is still based in Madrid but we actually met on a gig in London, strangely enough. We did a gig with Flamenco Express, which is a company based in the UK. We were both guest artists and Yinka happened to come along to see us because she knew us both independently. It was sort of like, 'Wow! We exist, there are three of us, we have to do something together'.
So dotdotdot was us coming together and supporting each other in this journey as well, because it's very hard. It was very lovely to suddenly have support from people who are from your own country and understand the journey and have been through all the same experiences. We decided we wanted to try to find our voice as a British company without it being another version of trying to look Spanish, trying to look gypsy, trying to imitate. We wanted to find our our way of doing this that is honest and sincere but at the same time respect the art form. It just spiralled from there.
How would you describe dotdotdot's flamenco style? You could call it contemporary flamenco. It's very difficult to define it because there are so many different nuances inside different styles of flamenco. The thing about dotdotdot that makes us strong as a trio is that each of us has a very different style. We each come from different backgrounds and we have very different approaches to flamenco. So in a funny way we've found the common ground between these three styles and we learn a lot from each other because of the way we approach it.
What are their dance backgrounds? All of us had done some classical ballet, Yinka's also done Afro-Cuban dancing as a child and Magdalena has always been more on the contemporary dance side. So it's three very different voices.
Tell us about i come to my body as a question. This is a piece that has been choreographed by Yinka – really she should be the one to speak about it – but it's based around the Guajíra style. Guajíra is a style… they call it the Ida y Vuelta styles; styles of flamenco that journeyed over to South America and came back, so it has a lot to do with the fishing port and the sailors who would come, and their experience of Cuba. The Guajíra style is very much about a nostalgia for Cuba and it's a very melodic and beautiful style. Listening to all these Guajíra songs, a lot of the poetry is sung by a man fantasising about this Cuban woman, usually a black woman or a mixed-race woman, and what Yinka wanted to do was give this woman a voice. She's always sung about and there are all these sexual innuendoes about fruit, how the fruit is swaying, and this woman never gets to say what she wants to say.
I suppose for us, it's a little bit feminist, this piece, and the interesting thing is that we've been collaborating with Toni Stuart, a spoken-word artist from South Africa, and she has written some beautiful poetry especially for this Guajíra, and she performs it, she's another voice. So we have a flamenco singer, Javier Rivera, but we also have Toni and we've really been playing with integrating English word into our flamenco style and seeing how we can play with all of these voices, ourselves included as we have rhythm and sound and dance as our voice as well. It's a very beautiful piece.
I love your costumes! They're incredibly stylish. We had them designed and made for the Wild Card. This piece was one of the pieces we presented for the Wild Card that we curated for the Lilian Baylis. We didn't want to go with the traditional frilly frock [laughs], so we've gone for a shorter, simple dress. It does have some of the flamenco traditional cut to it but we've escaped frills and spots. For No Frills, we had long-length dresses with black coats over them.
What makes a great flamenco dancer? That's a very difficult question but I will try to answer it…
Sorry! I would probably say personality… You've got to have a good sense of rhythm…
The hands seem quite difficult… It's all difficult [laughs]. It just depends. You have to be honest with what attracts you to flamenco and what you want to pursue within it, because there are so many directions you could go and so many different styles. You have to be prepared to go in depth and really respect the art form. They say the singer is the most important person in flamenco, not the dancer. Everything is based around the singing, so if you want to dance flamenco and you're really serious about it you have to really study the singing. That's a big part of dancing; that you understand what it is that you're dancing to and how to illustrate it. That's a vital element and if you don't really know about it or haven't studied, you might get found out.
What are your hopes for dodtdotdot? We're hoping to create a triple bill over the next year and this will be one of the pieces. We've got lots of ideas for lots of different projects that we want to do, and we also want to create an outreach programme. The possibilities are endless. As long as we're able to keep creating, and keep exploring our voice, we'll be fulfilled.
dotdotdot dance will perform i come to my body as a question during Sampled at Sadler's Wells in London on 3 and 4 February 2017 and at the Lowry in Manchester on 23 and 24 February.
For Sampled tickets in London click here and for Manchester here
Picture credits: Noemí’s headshot,Adam Newby; yellow dresses, Camilla Greenwell; other shots, Hugo Sánchez Romero
Twitter: @dotsfordance @Sadlers_Wells
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