Esmeralda Valderrama | Dancer, choreographer and founder of Danza Mobile “Art is a very important tool for social change”

More than 40 years ago, Esmeralda Valderrama (Madrid, 1958) was a dancer who got sick at auditions, checking that they all had to be of a certain size. Dance for her was more than just canons and she discovered it when she met Maite León and her psychoballet and danced surrounded by people with disabilities. Then he settled in Seville where, with the help of the psychologist Fernando Coronado, he opened Danza Mobile, which has become his way of life. And the small school has evolved into a great disability, art, participation and job placement project rated by Forbes as one of the largest other fortunes from Spain.

–Danza Mobile turns 25 years old as an international benchmark.

-Yes, there was a time when we were almost better known abroad. We participated in inclusive dance festivals and we were a reference in Europe because there were hardly any companies that worked with intellectual disabilities, like us. Then, the Scene Mobile festival also made us very visible outside and, little by little, we have also entered standardized circuits here, such as the one in Palma del Río, and we have been in the program of the Lope de Vega in Seville for some time now, thanks to the fact that very decisive people for us like Antonio Álamo wanted to have inclusive theater. And they have given us the Max Award of a social nature …

–You do a lot of social good, although that has not been your end, has it?

-In any moment. Obviously, the awards are very much appreciated, but my goal is artistic. What happens is that art is a very important tool for social change. It is a meeting place. We all find ourselves in art, we have different cultures, languages ​​… In this it is not that you fill out a form and someone judges you and says if it is good or bad, it is about enhancing creativity and proving your identity.

–And to celebrate diversity. That has cost, right?

-Yes. We are all different. When I go to give talks to schools, the children quickly understand that difference. They soon realize that the fool is the one who speaks nonsense and that a person with Down syndrome may or may not be a fool, depending on what he says. Nor is it bad if it is not sick at the time. Children have no problem, we are the ones who give them weird slogans.

– Do families help?

– Parents are parents … but today’s situation has nothing to do with what happened 25 years ago. Fortunately, they handle other information. Before, a person with a disability was born and it was a cross with which they had to carry their whole life and overprotect it.

-Before that circumstance he was even hiding.

-Totally. There was a lot of ignorance. People with intellectual disabilities do not have the facility to speak, oratory, but that does not mean that they have nothing inside, they have it but they cannot express it in words. And art opens that way of communication.

– The best example is one of the members of the company, Helliot Baeza, acclaimed as a dancer and who has broken barriers.

– Being awarded the Escenarios de Sevilla award in 2018 as the best male dance performer has been a milestone. It is an award given by the professionals themselves. It is a very important step forward that helps to change the image of people with intellectual disabilities. And when it comes to dancers or actors it’s complicated. Because if a person with functional diversity paints a picture, what is seen is the picture that is exhibited. If you create music, you listen to the recording and judge. It is different when you see who you are and how you are.

“Children have no problem, they soon realize that the fool is the one who speaks nonsense, not the one with Down syndrome”

–In your career there are other milestones as well.

–When we started the dance school was open to everyone. But people with intellectual disabilities began to enter and now in the afternoons we already have groups of siblings. That is what it is all about.

–And not everyone has to become an artist.

– No, of course, not all of us have to be worth the same. We have a center for the creation of performing and plastic arts, in which there are 28 students now who are training with us all the time. There are workshops on contemporary dance, theater, music, oral narration, photography, circus and choreographic action. And then there is the company, whose interpreters are people without and with intellectual disabilities. Only six students from the center have enough preparation to be in it.

–They have grown as artists and as people. You help them too.

-Everything goes together. Our project is basically artistic, but we are surrounded by wonderful and generous people. For example, we support a project that started with some parents to set up a flat where, in groups of 3 or 4, the students live with a teacher for a week and lead a life that is as autonomous as possible. And we also work on job placement in the company itself and train interpreters who have been working in others or are support people in our school.

–In the end, success is the conjunction of all those sensibilities.

-So is. One of the strongest points we have at Danza Mobile is that all the teachers come from the art world, they are professionals, dancers, choreographers, visual artists … They teach with passion and that greatly enriches the artists and the shows.

“What is the next one?”

-We are going to release in May Punishment from god, with the direction of Gregor Acuña. And we are immersed in the Mobile Scene festival, which has been running for 13 editions. In 2020 it was suspended due to the pandemic and this year we have adapted it by promoting Andalusian companies and bringing creators closer to functional diversity, since they are asked for a work in which at least one person with this type of disability participates. And in October the companies with which we had already made commitments last year will perform in Seville as guests.

–We also see plastic arts projects.

–We are promoting that part of the center, coordinated by Nicolas Nishiky. There are always exhibitions around the festival. We are a very big family.

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