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Teodoro Morca
By Ninotchka Bennahum
http://www.dancemagazine.com/issues/September-2009/Teodoro-Morca
Teodoro “Teo” Morca has danced, taught, and choreographed in the flamenco idiom for 55 years. Once the partner of the famed 1960s Spanish bailaora Pilar Lopez, he has devoted his career to making flamenco dance accessible to any student.
Morca’s broad dance background includes classical ballet, escuela bolera, modern dance, and karate. Born in Los Angeles to Hungarian immigrants, he began his training in 1952 with the Cansino family, Antonio Triana, and Martin Vargas. Flamenco was in vogue in the U.S. following the Spanish Civil War. Artists sought refuge in America from Generalissimo Franco, and Morca began earning acclaim as a choreographer. In 1964 he relocated to Madrid, where he joined Pilar Lopez’s Baile Español and became one of the only American teachers at the famed studio Amor de Dios. Upon returning to the States in 1975, he and his wife, Isabel, founded the Morca Academy of Performing Arts in Bellingham, WA. There, he evolved his teaching craft until 1998. Last year he published The Morca Method of Flamenco (see www.morca.com) and became the director of the Taos Academy of Dance Arts in New Mexico, where Ninotchka Bennahum spoke with him recently.
What inspired you to develop your own method of teaching? I observed American students of flamenco struggle both in Spain and the States. If you study at Amor de Dios in Madrid, you’ll end up in the class of a Gypsy or Spanish teacher known for his or her stylistic approach to the form. You will learn their bulerías or alegrías. But you may have trouble finding a well-rounded flamenco education: how to strengthen one part of the body while working another, and mastering footwork.
What makes your classes unique? I explain how to work every part of the body, how to utilize all of your training. I want dancers to think of the body as a single moving force of nature. Once the entire core is working well, you can master good footwork. My method is to bring out the student’s individuality within the basic vocabulary of flamenco. I offer technique classes in 11-, 4-, and 12-count rhythms, and I stop to explain what interpretation means.
Improvisation is the heart of flamenco. How do you teach students to improvise? There is no such thing as pure improvisation in flamenco. Improvisation comes when a student has mastered the structure of the palo, or rhythm. She can then add accentuations or even beats to an established phrase.
Does a serious student of flamenco have to make the pilgrimage to Spain to become an artist? Yes, but they have to be thoughtful about it. There are two reasons to go to Spain: to absorb the culture and to study flamenco with great teachers. Most students get off the plane and run straight to the nearest studio. My advice—spend some time absorbing the atmosphere, the architecture; eat the food; observe people’s mannerisms. Then, maybe, take a class. If you have a month, take two weeks to study Spanish and the next two to check out the classes that may fit your personality. Spain is Mecca for the serious flamenco student. Traveling there is a must for the ambiente alone.
What if you can’t afford to go to Spain? Should you give up on flamenco? You can always go to the Festival Flamenco in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Aside from this year’s hiatus due to the global financial crisis, it’s the finest performance/workshop for flamenco artists and students outside of Spain.
What is the relationship between choreography and technique in flamenco? Choreography emerges with an understanding of the various dances: siguiriyas, bulerías, martinetes. All of these dances have set structures with a beginning entrada and a final exit, salida. Each has various llamadas, calls to the guitarist and singer to tell them what you will do next, which usually means a change in footwork. A dancer has to know the traditional structure to discover ways of embellishing the dance. Today you do not see too much real choreography, a whole dance with a beginning, crescendo, and end. You see only patadas, short displays of fast footwork and then walking around the stage like you are thinking of the next inspiration.
How is that different from what you were taught? I come from the school where you danced a full choreography, keeping the feeling and interpretation of that form until the end of the dance. Each dance looked different from the next. Flamenco should have the same rules as any dance form, especially since it has gone onto the concert stage where you have to know how to use space. Today you see dancers out there with 30 minutes of footwork. Carmen Amaya never performed longer than nine minutes. A dancer should leave the audience hungry.
Do men and women have different choreography in flamenco? Other than skirt work, the techniques are the same for men and women. My wife, Isabel, had a skirt and bata (train) made for me, as sometimes I would concentrate on how a woman uses her legs. That is a bit of a lost art now that women just grab their skirts and lift to show their footwork. Then there are details such as florea, the flowering hand movements. Men and women do these. A man’s fingers are stretched in a more linear fashion to reflect his upright posture and long line in pants.
What great flamenco teacher has affected your career? Martin Vargas, from Valencia, Spain, was one of the few teachers I have known who did not have a big ego. I thank him for preparing me for my first trip to Spain. When Pilar Lopez saw me on television there and asked me to audition, I showed her whatever she asked for: flamenco, Spanish Classical, virtuoso castanet playing. I was prepared because of Vargas.
What do you hope to learn from your students? I hope to keep learning how to teach them better. It is a true give-and-take between teacher and student, worth a lifetime.
Photo by Jeffrey Willis
It’s 3:02 pm and the head in my computer says, “Well? What do you want to show me today?”
The head is Teo Morca, it’s live, and he’s 1795 miles away from here. We are conducting a private class/coaching session via Skype, an internet communication program.
We’ve been doing this for a year now. About once or twice a week, I’ve been meeting with Teo and having private class with him, on top of the workshops I take with him in person.
It took me a year to convince him to do it. He had never done it before, and he wanted to be sure he was able to give good instruction, to communicate properly, as he had doubts over how well a webcam would work in a class situation. But we tried it, and he was willing to continue.
Be careful for what you wish for. There he was on my computer, ready to give instruction, and there I was… intimidated… after all, he was, is… well, Teo Morca.
It was that “swimming through molasses” moment when I realized I had the audience of a master, and at that very moment I had to deliver, to show him something, anything. This wasn’t a class where I could just hide in the back of a crowd and take what I wanted. It didn’t matter that we had worked together before in person, this was still something new. Not feeling self-conscious was Not Possible. I knew that nothing I could do could possibly impress him.
It took him some time, but he eventually cured me of feeling self-conscious. How, I’m not sure. Was it his way of making me double over laughing, even as he corrected me? His “matter of fact” way about approaching the art form, instruction, communication, anything? The gritty sense of humor? Could it have been how he rode me on one particular move, over and over again, until I actually got mad at him? I don’t know, but seeing him regularly, even on my computer screen, has given me the priceless opportunity to study with a Master on a regular basis… even though I live in North Carolina, and he lives in Taos.
Earlier this year, he was teaching me choreography for Albéniz’s Asturias-Leyenda. This is an exquisite choreographic piece that Morca composed years ago. He performed this piece with Pilar Lopez when he toured with her company. I was moving across my studio floor, marking through, getting the hang of using my castanets in a different way… I’m thinking feet, direction, hands, head, castanets…. and he said, “What the hell is your left arm waiting for? A miracle?”
Five minutes later, I’m still doubled over, guffawing, when a sudden concern hits me that I’m going to lose control of my bladder, and I hightail it out of the studio, saying, “Excuse me!!! I’ll be back!!” The head on my computer screen is looking pretty amused. He’s starting to laugh too, not at what he said, but at the spectacle 1795 miles away.
Sometimes the class gives way to a lecture, or charla, which, when it happens, is appropriate; and although I’m usually rearing to move and dance, I’m happy with the charla when I can get it. Sometimes I scheduled a class just for a charla, no dancing, just listening. That is one of the great things that Morca is known for, across our world – he supplements his instruction of flamenco technique with the charla, where he goes over history and theory of flamenco, and a few other jewels as well.
Beyond the instruction, beyond the charla, the stories Teo has are incredible. Most of these just come up while we’re talking about something else. One story he actually wrote about in one of his books; one day he was performing alegrias…he looked down from the stage and saw that Carmen Amaya had arrived. After his performance, with a generous smile, she gave him her personal glass of champagne, calling him “one of the greats.” Amaya would let him watch her rehearsals as well. Any dancer knows that letting someone watch your rehearsals is very difficult, very personal.
Another great story was when he was working as a waiter in New York. The maitre d’ was French, of course, and they had become close friends. Gene Kelly was known to be a patron. The maitre d’ convinced Gene Kelly to watch this fabulous dancer, who just happened to be waiting tables. He unscrewed the kitchen door off its hinges just so Teo could dance on a wooden surface for him. Teo performed his tacit escobilla por alegrias con palmas for him (Teo originated this – dancing the escobilla, with no accompaniment, but instead accompanying with his own palmas). As a result, Gene Kelly invited Teo to work with him.
There was one story he had about his time in Spain touring with Pilar Lopez. Teo was one of the principal dancers of the company, and principal dancers in the company got to sit in the front of the bus. Teo was speaking in English to a visitor on the bus, and one of the supporting dancers in the back, a gitano (gypsy), hearing him speaking English, made a disparaging comment, “eso americano…” and Teo turned around and responded, “pero estoy en frente!” (“But I’m the one in front.”)
The moxy and discipline that Teo has had to have throughout his career is palpable. He described it once as “like pushing a boulder uphill.” The effort that Teo Morca has invested in his career and formation as a Master Artist is difficult to fathom, and even more difficult when you try to. Learning someone’s choreography is like getting inside his brain. I’m an MIT graduate, and Morca’s choreography -- including his musicality, his timing, his interpretation -- blows my mind.
If you love flamenco, and you want to revisit the art form in its most honest state, study with Teo Morca. In 1974, he offered the very first All Flamenco Workshop Festival in the United States, at the then nascent Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. Since then, there have been many, many others following in his wake. I’ve reached over 1000 words here, so I’ll stop gushing. If Teo Morca comes to your town to teach a workshop, don’t miss the opportunity, it is once in a lifetime.
Teo Morca is the artistic director of the Taos Academy of Dance Arts. For more information on Teo Morca, visit www.morca.com.
The author, Tamara Saj, is the founder of the Cape Fear Arte Flamenco. For more information on Tamara Saj, visit www.tamarasaj.com.
ed. note: we are pleased to offer correspondent tamara saj’s take on studying with teo morca, and invite you to view the videos following the article. teo’s site is www.morca.com; available there is the third edition of “flamenco spirit, becoming the dance” which is a fantastic book, both an autobiographical artistic and spiritual journey into the heart of flamenco and philosophical musings that defy categorization. one of planetflamenco’s favorite books of any kind, we are particularly struck by its dedication, which rings so true.
HIGHLY recommended. ole, teo!
www.dance-teacher.com (above)
felicidades, maestro morca!