«First I feel and then I move, the dance arises from the need to tell»CORDOVA
Mercedes of Cordova It’s pure dynamite. Purely born in Cordoba, she lives between Seville and the entire world, exuding art wherever she steps. This white night will present in Córdoba Without further adothe company recital in which she is the only dance performer. «Without further ado “It is a project that is maintained over time because it is an on-demand show that I am asked to perform in outdoor spaces in which I compile all the numbers from larger projects in which I dance alone.” It has an improvisation part, he assures, but from what he has in mind, today it will end with soleá and begin with a taranto. «The area of Calahorra is the place where I performed for the first time at Noche Blanca as winner of the National Flamenco Award», a title she obtained thanks to that style, taranto. “For me It is very special to return to my land already that place, at the time I lived in 2013,” he says.
A lover of flamenco in all its forms, whenever he comes to the Noche Blanca he takes the opportunity to see what is happening in other stages. «Last time I ended up seeing my dear Rosario La tremendita in the Alcázar Gardens and I had a great time.» For her, this event is an opportunity “to reach the mass public, to get young people hooked on flamenco at a time when it is difficult to bring people to the theater.”
«My next show will be an attempt to raise my voice for those who had to remain silent»
Mercedes started dancing almost before walking. At four years old she was already trying potatoes. “My mother, who is also a dancer, introduced me to duende. She really liked it and although I don’t come from a family of artists, she loved it and would have liked to dedicate herself to this.” She was the one who targeted her under the orders of Antonio Mondéjar “and she looks at what the joke has become.” In recent years, she has not stopped touring on the big stages. “We have been in London, in one of the most impressive settings, in Madrid, after here I am going to Milan, then to the United States, then to France and Santa Barbara… the marathon begins.”
An all-terrain dancer, she assures that she enjoys any tablao, be it a club or a soccer stadium. “I like theaters more and more, that’s where I have more possibilities to express myself, but getting on any stage, even in the studio in the morning, fills me with joy, respect and gratitude for being able to do what I like.”
“First I feel and then I move”
When asked what he thinks about when he dances, he answers without thinking too much. “They say that if I know that it’s told because if you do it it wouldn’t be worth dancing, I keep that to myself,” she says convinced, but then adds that she thinks about different things depending on the show because there is always a part of what she is telling. that gets into your head when dancing. “I always say that First I feel and then I move, That is why each show has arisen from a need to tell something. Because of his feet, his hands are like the voice and the word for a poet. “That’s why I say that if we told what we thought, what would be the point of dancing it? This is about using what you have experienced, everything that moves you, what you suffer, what amuses you, anything that moves you, to create.” Then, when exposing it to the public, “you trust that whoever sees you can take it into their life, they feel identified and draw their own conclusions from it.” That is in his opinion the essence of flamenco. “That is why it is so powerful, because it moves a lot and each person is affected according to their experience.”
About the controversy that she is the only woman of this White Night, says that “it is a coincidence because it is not so easy to balance artists’ agendas” and that she is also not the only woman because there are others in the flamenco paintings of other artists. «I have always considered myself a feminist with the meaning of equality, I have nothing against the men I adore, and right now it touches me a lot because of the project I am preparing, Olvidadas, about Las Sinsombrero, the women of the Generation of ’27 who They were erased in front of men,” he explains. She assures, however, that she has never experienced something like this, “maybe because of my character, I don’t know.” In her opinion, flamenco is experiencing a moment “of the rise of women, of a lot of female presence, in dancing and in everything”, although she adds that “it doesn’t hurt to remember it so that Las Sinsombrero doesn’t happen again, and “If it happens to someone, let them say it out loud and we will be there to support them.”
Regarding this new show, he anticipates that there will be a first step at the Torrox Flamenco Festival although the absolute premiere will be at the Seville Biennial in September. Later it will come to Córdoba in 2025 although there is still no specific date. “It’s normal,” he says, “schedules go from one year to the next.”
Forgotten It will be a feminist show, in the good sense of the word, she emphasizes, and apart from that it will be a production “with which to rescue wonderful works, with which to contribute my grain of sand to rediscover all those women, including Marga Manso of which I am totally in love with, most of which I didn’t even know about until recently. It will be his particular “hug” to the Sinsombrero in an attempt to “raise their voices for those who had to remain silent so that something like this does not happen again.”
He discovered all of these women one night looking at things on their cell phones, investigating. «She was looking for the title for another show, playing with words, looking at synonyms and I got a report from The Hatless that caught my attention,” she remembers, “I started reading and stayed up all night, I got really angry that I hadn’t heard anything about them and then I realized that I wasn’t the only one, so I told myself I had to do something.” .
Tonight, she will be the only woman in Without further ado, but she won’t be alone. With her will be Jesús Corbacho and Jonathan Jiménez on vocals, her personal and artistic partner Juan Campaño on guitar and Paco Vega on percussion. Tonight, Mercedes de Córdoba will write another blank page of the flamenco night.
