Sweat glistens moistly on his bare chest; flames sparkle at his heels. He s the darling of the world s glitterati, but on stage Joaquin Cortes is all about physical instinct transformed into living, breathing art.
A contemporary flamenco dancer, Joaquin Cortes has commandeered the entertainment media including, most importantly, the youth sector like no other dancer before. His high cheekbones and dark eyes loom from TV screens and magazine pages around the world. Outside his shows, adoring women, teenage fans, merchandise punters and frenzied journalists battle for a slant on the star.
With the stature and status of a Bono or Prince like them, Cortes looks bigger on stage than off this 28-year-old Spanish gypsy has revolutionised the image and greatly expanded the market of dance, changing it overnight into something triple-hip, bringing what s been reserved for the cultural elite to a new, younger, more wide-ranging audience.
Cortes is good at adapting to all the high-profile media. Pedro Almodovar, Spain s famous movie director, wrote a flamenco part specially for him in his recent film The Flower Of My Secret while Italian designer Armani has adopted him as his favourite client-cum-walking advertisement, having wrested the dancer from several other fashion houses. Cortes is the male sex symbol for 97, as a result of possessing two important qualities: (a) serious panache and (b) youth appeal. Aside from the quality of their music, this is the essence of most rock stars fame, and it s what Cortes has shrewdly recognised and acted upon.
At the tiller of this unique operation is the weathered hand of Pino Sagliocco, Spain s foremost music promoter. Among many other acts, Sagliocco has brought Michael Jackson, Frank Sinatra, The Rolling Stones, Prince and Madonna to his country, the birthplace of Hello! magazine, that sunny land where celebrity gossip, glitter and kitsch are an endemic part of the culture.
Applying his music production and hype techniques to Joaquin Cortes, the innovative young dancer with potential cult status, Sagliocco has fused two art forms into a highly popular and commercial hybrid which, like other successful capitalist products, creates its own market as it goes along.
On the road, Cortes company resembles a rock extravaganza. 25 people, including twelve fellow gypsies, back up Cortes foot-stamping and torso-bending with lithesome, passionate dancing and live flamenco vocals and instrumentals. His show is a monster on the move, lit spectacularly, adorned with costumes you see on the international catwalk. As with his revolutionary choreography, which hurls together classical ballet, contemporary dance and traditional flamenco, the music in Cortes show is a highly original concoction of experiment and gypsy tradition. An integral part of his persona, Cortes gypsy background is another big selling point because, as Moya Doherty and Michael Flatley also know, these days it s hip to be ethnic and contemporary.
gypsy culture
I want to express my culture from a modern perspective, says Cortes, who s on the line coming to me via Ana, a Spanish interpreter delighted to be talking to one of her country s most famous artists. The culture has to develop, I want to represent it in contemporary terms, with up-to-date influences.
Cortes sees himself as an ambassador for gypsy culture; in what way does that culture differ with what s around it?
A rich, relaxed and courteous voice says, All of the cultures, nowadays they are united, because they are getting to the standards of the white culture, and losing their characteristics. But the gypsy culture still has some characteristics, very much belonging to its origins.
Like the poignant melancholy heard in traditional Irish airs and ballads, flamenco singing and dancing often pours out la pena negra that black pain of despair which makes the female singers wail in anguish, the male dancers rage in apoplectic emotional fury. Is it the naked cry of the oppressed, as in Irish rebel songs, or an underlying philosophy with a sense of drama, mysticism and inexorable fate at its core?
The origins of the gypsy culture come from India, and the way I dance is related to those roots, and their development from India. The gypsies were thrown out of India because they were believed to be the fifth caste. They came to Europe, and into Spain at the time of the Catholic kings in the 15th century, and were persecuted in Spain over that time.
They were persecuted during the Nazi times; the Nazis not only persecuted Jewish but blacks and gypsies too. There s a link between all the gypsies of Europe because of their origins, and they used to speak a language called Romany, which unfortunately is not spoken very widely in Spain today. It s a language that has very ancient origins; it would be one the first languages.
Cortes is notorious among flamenco purists as a rebel. He believes that by injecting his traditional culture with modern-day influences he is ensuring rather than diminishing that culture s chance for independent survival. I m rebellious in my dancing because it s in my nature, my personality is like that, he laughs. He also laughs when I suggest that his emotional depths implicit in the way he blazons across the floor may have their source in his Piscean birth sign (Cortes birthday is the day after this interview).
The Cortes phenomenon know no bounds, it seems: the movie directors, politicians (Cortes is esteemed so highly in Spanish public life that a square s already been named after him), fashion designers and top promoters flocking to his side must be boosting their own careers through association with the rebellious young dancing man. And as for Cortes connection with the supermodel world. Joaquin guards his private life carefully, and besides, the cloud of ambiguity around their possible relationship must be bringing mutual publicity to both he and Campbell.
Cortes is considerably aided by his media image. Sleek, sexy, young and artistically impulsive, he is fiery and passionate, yet also humble, polite and down-to-earth an endearing mix for the public at large. But he also has plenty of talent, imagination and intelligence. Dance is his life, and his next experiment, a fusion of flamenco and black gospel, sounds like something to keep an eye out for. n