The Sergio Bernal company is a phenomenon born in a pandemic. Just when the swan of the National Ballet of Spain decided to fly on its own, bam! They confined everyone to their homes. There, the sexiest dancer on the Spanish scene, the one who competes for the covers of the magazine, began a process of introspection and confrontation with the character he had built for himself. He aspired to be free and enjoy – and not suffer – his art.
As a child he took refuge in dance when his parents separated. His twin brother lasted two days in that school where there were only girls, but Sergio discovered an irrepressible vocation that today, at 33, pushes him to explore himself as a person and overcome atavistic insecurities, like the one that made José Antonio, in a casting , will classify him as “unfit”. He was 18 years old. “That is no way to encourage a child,” says the Madrid artist over a coffee and half a chocolate palmer (the other half is left on the plate).
The meeting takes place in a cafeteria in his native Madrid. The reason is the Barcelona debut of his company with Ser, on May 2 and 3 at the Teatre Victòria.
Barcelona must mean something in his career. He said goodbye to the BNE at the Liceu, in August 2019…
Yes, and in September I opened my solo career right there, at the IBStage galas. Then I came to Peralada with Rodin…
But that Rodin was a little green.
Yes, it was a premiere, it had to be filmed. The full premiere was something else.
In Ser you no longer talk about Rodin or Lorca, but about yourself. Because?
In the introspection of the pandemic, when perhaps the mask of my character faded, because there was not even anyone to tell your story, I realized all my insecurities, who I was, where I came from and everything I had been through. telling, that perhaps it was a lie. It gave me an opportunity to use dance as a channel in which to grow. And in Being I narrate who I am, getting rid of attachments and reaching the purest part that I wanted to tell the public: I play a band with Beyoncé because I like Beyoncé and because it gives me joy and spark, but I also play Max Richter through the 4 Seasons, because it is beauty, it is classicism. And with flamenco I narrate the world of my insecurities. Because I grew up believing that I came from flamenco and I came from Ketama.
When I went to the conservatory and studied classical music, I thought that flamenco wasn’t my thing, or that it wouldn’t suit me. But who says he doesn’t hit me! If flamenco is a way of communicating, something very individual… how we tell our joys and our sorrows. And that guitar and those shapes are those sadnesses that I have felt when I have not been valued, when I have not valued myself. In that stylized dance I use Coetus, the Catalan traditional music group, because it is very percussive, like that inner roar that doesn’t let us stop. Being is a soundtrack of my life, a meeting of emotions that I had the need to express. In the end one of the first jobs of an artist is to know himself, if not, your speech probably cannot be real. And if it’s not real you don’t get excited, and if you don’t get excited you can’t move others.
He doesn’t marry any style, he wants to cover them all. Which creators would you like to work with?
I don’t want to focus on flamenco or classical, I would like to always be able to work in different languages, the richer the language, the better I will be able to connect with others. I don’t feel like I’m a 21st century choreographer. I think I am a great performer and I have to work on my performance, and for that I need great choreographers by my side. I understand that right now I am doing a dirty job, I mean, I have to start building a company so that in a matter of 5 or 10 years I can have a name and we can have financial support that allows us to work with great performers, great choreographers and musicians and costume designers. I have been with Ricardo Cue for many years and I would like to continue working with him, he has a very good sensitivity and knowledge of the stage. But I would love William Forsythe, also Benoit-Swan Pouffer, director of London’s Rambert, with whom I worked on my Valentino show, or Mats Ek, the choreographer of emotions. And I have always liked working with Jesús Carmona and I would like to do it with Rocío Molina.
How would you sell yourself to Forsythe?
He looks for dynamism in his choreographies, rhythm, temperament. And as a Spanish and flamenco dancer we work on a rhythmic basis, we have it very developed.
His twin brother went from continuing to dance school and made the jump to football.
And I stayed in the girls’ place, so to speak. But I didn’t care about the opinion of others, because I didn’t see it in boys or girls, I treated it as a passion. Well, we come politically from a time in which the boy dancer was a faggot and the girl was almost a prostitute. And the artists were dedicated to something that had no foundation. I always talk about this when confronted with the Government: the arts are not supported in that country, and it is curious, because when people travel to a country, we do so for its art, for the art of each place. Why don’t we encourage this in Spain? We have so much to promote, in each region as well. It is our main source of income apart from having sun, beach and tomatoes in the garden. Why don’t we do that work of valuing what is ours? We are scenic people, our way of communicating is very open, we have no problems showing our emotions, unlike other northern cultures.
