Málaga, (EFE).- The Madrid dancer Sergio Bernal maintains that “art is not understood, it is felt”, and moving the public is precisely the purpose of his first show as choreographer and director, “Ser”, an eclectic and innovative that premiered in 2020 and is now coming to the Teatro del Soho CaixaBank in Malaga.
Bernal (Madrid, 1990), recently recognized with the Emerging Talent Award by the Academy of Performing Arts, joined the National Ballet of Spain in 2012 as a soloist and became principal dancer in 2016, at just 26 years of age.
Three years later, at the age of 29, and aware that dance is “a very short profession”, she decided that it was “the ideal time” to undertake new projects and she abandoned the stability and security offered by the National Ballet to create her own company. , the Sergio Bernal Dance Company, together with Ricardo Cue, also a dancer and choreographer.
“The National Ballet is a wonderful house and I have felt very happy to be there, but in the end you have the need to continue growing, to see how you can solve, improve, create… it was the path I wanted to find”, explains Bernal in a interview with EFE.
A singing to life”
“Ser”, which can be seen until Saturday the 4th at the Teatro del Soho, the stage space created by Antonio Banderas in Malaga, is his directorial debut, a project that was conceived during the pandemic as “a song to life”. and that due to the restrictions derived from the health crisis, it could not be released until the end of 2020.
At that moment when “our lives came to a standstill”, Bernal set out to put together a show with which people, when they could set foot in a theater again, “would get excited, get excited, smile again, want to come back to life.” that we had”.
And that’s how “Ser” was born, a show that shows his most personal side, as it combines classical ballet, flamenco and contemporary dance, the artistic range that Bernal has been learning during his career. It also plays live songs by Beyoncé, Vivaldi or the ‘Soleá por Bulerías’, the ‘playlist’ that has accompanied this young dancer throughout his life.
Emotion through dance
Bernal, considered by Forbes one of the most influential people in culture in Spain, considers that “dancing is not just performing, it is making people travel, transporting them to a feeling, a memory, an emotion, a moment of his life”, and he believes that this show achieves this.
The artist assures that “dance does not have a language, it does not come with a manual”, and that, like art in general, it is not about understanding it, but about “sitting down and getting excited”. «If it excites you, you have already understood it, and if not, nothing happens. It is not that you have not understood it, it is that you have not been moved, you have not liked it ».
“Art is not understood, art is felt, that is enough,” Bernal emphasizes.
The influence of Billy Elliott
This young dancer came into the world of dance a bit by chance. There is no artist in his family, but his mother decided to enroll him and his twin brother in flamenco classes as an extracurricular activity. His brother “lasted two weeks,” but he kept going, becoming an international star.
She remembers that she taught at a neighborhood school and that it was not until she was 8 years old that she discovered, thanks to the film “Billy Elliot”, that professional conservatories and dance schools existed.
She then decided to also study classical, stylized and bolero school dance, which are the different styles of Spanish dance, because broadening your artistic range, she asserts, “allows you to move freely in the world of dance” and connect better with the public.
He therefore acknowledges that “Billy Elliot”, the British film that tells the story of a working-class boy who fights against social stereotypes and his family’s objection to achieve his dream, which is to be a dancer, “opened the doors for him » from the world of dance and «predicted» what was going to happen to him.
Bernal, like Billy Elliot, has ended up being the principal dancer and “flying” on the stage of the main theaters in the world together with international stars such as Tamara Rojo, Alina Somova, Maya Plisétskaya or Evgenia Obraztsova.
Starting a business in times of pandemic
Undertaking is always difficult and in the world of culture even more so. Although he admits to having lived through moments of uncertainty, fear and insecurity in recent years, Bernal makes a positive assessment of the experience and of having stopped being a “State official” to lead his own artistic and business project.
The Government demands more support for the sector and a Patronage Law that equates Spain to countries like France, the United Kingdom or the United States: «There art and culture is somehow private, it works with sponsorship and large projects can be carried out », Bernal points out.
He does not understand why in Spain, which is the “flag of art”, the birthplace of musicians such as Paco de Lucía, Albéniz or Manuel de Falla, and painters such as Velázquez, Goya or Picasso, this sector is not sufficiently helped.
«I have been lucky to have friends who are great and who have the economic possibilities to support projects like this, but I do demand a little more support for culture», since it, he stresses, «brings us up, educates us, and for That is essential that the Government supports it ».
rodin on the horizon
After visiting Malaga, “Ser” will return to Madrid in April and will tour five cities in Italy.
Sergio Bernal, meanwhile, is already preparing his next project, a show that will premiere in the summer inspired by the life of the French sculptor François Auguste René Rodin, considered the father of modern sculpture and author of works such as “The Thinker” or “The Kiss”. ».
It will be a show about his life, its complexity, its moments of madness and art. “We are going to make his sculptures dance,” promises Bernal. EFE
