You are in the ballet of the Munich opera, also playing Fordlandia and In the Still of the Night. We couldn't see Fordland ...
Yes, but Fordland will come back. We were in August at the Victoria Eugenia in San Sebastian, inside the Quincena Musical. Due to restrictions on capacity, only 400 tickets could be sold. Subscribers and others, in 20 minutes there was no entrance. No one left from Zumaia, I know, and I had to fight for tickets for the locals. People's grief, because he couldn't see it. But next year we will do it in Kursaal; on 22 May, things are fine. Right now, I'm focused on that, organizing everything. The other, In the Still of the Night, premiered in Dorrmund and soon wanted it in Bilbao, at the Arriaga.

He says he is organising next year’s action. We see dance, no, working as
manager… I love organizing things! I enjoy, and it is rare, because dancers are mostly artists, creators and very bad organizing nothing, remembering works, responding to calls and messages… That’s why they often lose their works because they don’t respond to messages. The dancer, for example, only remembers his body, his bears. I also really like to organize myself. I've never had a manager.

Born in Zumaia, Madrid, Marseille, San Francisco, Munich... they appear in your geography of life...
I knew the way I wanted to do: go to a lot of places, study, work with people, take something from each site. And that's what I did. From Madrid I went to Marseille, from there to San Francisco, then to Munich… I spent 31 years inside the companies of each other, and once the company’s director was changed back then, I thought I would take another path to work freely in the dance world. I am still working with the company in Dortmund, but apart from that work I have the freedom to choose my job: what to do, how, with whom… and that has allowed me to create things.

So far, haven't you had a chance?
I haven't had time and to create anything you need time. And to do so, you have to have your own calendar. So, yes, you can create it, organize the show, dance in the places you decide… Otherwise, being in the company, you depend on the director. So over the years, I've realized my time and it's wonderful, because I work there and here, not just in one place, not just in one company. I also have a six-year-old boy, I make a lot of trips, and I know he's better in Zumaia, at home, in the furniture of the family, in the hands of other people than in Madrid, for example.

A people, on the one hand, a big city, on the other.
Living in the city, it would be much easier to make the trips I have to do, but in Zumaia my son has a quality that he does not have in Madrid: family, freedom, friends… He goes to the square below and there goes the child playing with his friends. In the big city, you don't have that freedom. The child is much happier here, and for me it's also breathing Zumaia. Zumaia is unrelated to the dance world. I come to the village and I'm the most normal person. People know me since I was born and I'm very comfortable, quiet.

It says the most normal person, even if we are a dancer with
international projection... The dancers are known on stage, dance lovers know us. What's outside that world, no. I'm not going to be passionately here. I can do what I want, go where I want. I'm not a public character, not at least that way. In Zumaia everyone knows me, but as a zumaiar. At the dance they come to see me, but in the rest there are no noises in my surroundings: I will look for the child to school, I am in the plaza while playing, or on the terrace… Normal.

Like the rest, a professional, top-of-the-line ballet dancer. How is that possible?
I too have thought about this on more than one occasion! There's no ballet atmosphere here, and the dancer I. “I have a lot of merit,” I say. But the truth is, there's no more secret than dedication and passion. At two or three years old, I said I was going to be a dancer, not that I wanted to be a dancer, but that I was going to be. It wasn't a one-day heating, that's what I was saying every day. At the time, I saw in a magazine that I loved the dancer Grace Kelly, I saw his dance school at the children of Monte Karlo (Monaco) and I cried.

Crying? Why cry? The magazine featured
five-year-olds, in dance school. They dance and I don't. And I started crying. I would say to my mother, “I laugh… You don’t believe me… I will be a dancer.” That's right. Then, when I was eight to nine years old, after I had fellowship, they came to school to cast a cast. They wanted to advertise a makeup toy called Miss Pepis, and the makeup seemed to me to be artistic. They took a small group, me among them, and I was delighted to advertise myself in front of the camera. Once, when we were there, the camera said to me: “You don’t need to be asked. When you grow up, you want to be an actor.” But I don't. “No, I will be a dancer.”

“I will be a dancer,” from a young age.
Yes. A year later, the participants of that advertising campaign, who were zumaiarras, opened a dance academy in the village. And there I started. There came a young professor, he saw me, and he told my mother that she had talent and all the physical conditions. Our mother saw and said to the rest of the aunts: “Yes, you’re very nice, but you’re a daughter, what am I going to say!” The following year, the academy paid a course to the dance teacher in Tarragona to get further training, and they told him to take me there, that I was going to benefit. Our mother, for her part, thought it would serve me to go to that course and see what the dance students of my age were able to do. To dispel that idea.

My mother didn't believe.
My mother saw I had a lot of excitement about being a dancer, but on the other hand, she was afraid to disappoint me. I was going on that course and I thought I was going to see and go back on everybody else's level, but it happened the other way around. From day one, I had my teachers on top of me and they'd say to my mother, “One in a hundred goes out to dance, and that’s your daughter. You have to help.” The mother felt they wanted to take her child away! [Barcelona] They wanted to take me to the Liceo. Our mothers, not our mothers. They wanted to take me to Brussels. Our mother, who didn’t… There was another teacher there, the Canary Islands, saying that last year there was a Donostiarra in the Canary Islands, Mentxu Medel, who had a dance academy in San Sebastian, and that I took me there.

To San Sebastian, yes, your mother took you.
Yes. I started twice a week, because I had to leave half an hour before school. Take the train and make a mockup. Take the car and desmaya. I got to the academy, I did the dance class, I went home… That’s how I went that year. When I was thirty-four years old, Mentxu Medel told my mother that I had to go to Madrid to study more, and that I had to prepare for scholarships, that I had to go to San Sebastian every day to pick up the dance school. But it was impossible for me to go and come every day from Zumaia to Donostia and, therefore, I had to go to San Sebastian to finish the EGB and learn more dancing.

He had to abandon the paths of education reglada.Los studies
are important, but it is more important to find your own path, the best for you, and the university is not always the best for everyone. The tutor told my mother that it was very clear, that she could do two races at the same time, that she could be the first president of Euskal Herria… My mother looked at me, asked: “What do you think?” “I want to be a dancer.” That's right. The tutor didn't believe. Mothers: “That’s what Lucia wants. We tried a year and we see it.” I started dancing and it's already. If it serves you for something, you have to prepare for it. In the world, there's nothing more important than being happy at your job.

When I was 15 years old, I worked, I danced, I turned from one side to the other.
This forced me to grow fast. There was no adolescence or person to pass on complaints to anyone. On the other hand, the world of dance is difficult, envy, competition, there are many things against … and artists, on the contrary, are very sensitive. This leads us to defend ourselves. The director may be very hard, and I had the hardest of the time, Victor Ullate, in Madrid. I would have thought about it, and today I couldn't do anything I said and did at the time. At the age of 18, this situation did not make me happy and I went to Marsella.Se opened a new world to me.

After Marseille, you have also been dancing in the companies of San Francisco and Munich… I went from one side to the other, I was willing to give everything in the dance world, which is the way to be
happy. I've learned what I had to study in one place, and I've gone to another, to learn more. In Madrid I started studying neoclassical dance, although it is normal to start studying classical. In Marseilles, with the choreographer Roland Petit, I learned a dramatic ballet. It was a discovery, I loved telling stories through dance. When I was there, I was called from La Scala [Milan] to dance on Lake Cisnes. He was 21 years old. It was the first time I performed the classic, I had a lot of work.

Why did you choose?
If I didn't do the classic then, I wouldn't ever do it. Classical dance is very tough. So I decided to go to the other end of the world, to San Francisco, where they didn't know me, to start from scratch and do all the classics. And there I did Giselle, the beautiful Loti, the Lake of the Cisnes, Raymonda… However, dramatic dance was what I liked most, that artistic world. And the day we came to England to dance the Nutcracker, the director of the Munich dance company took care of me to go with them. But I had just started with the San Francisco ballet, and I didn't want to suspend them. I spent five years in San Francisco, and then yes, I called the director of Munich. And to Munich!

And when COVID-19 appeared in
Munich -- and when the lockdown came, yes. In March of last year, Matthew [Golding] and I were dancing in the company of Munich. From night to morning, the theater was closed. As quickly as we could, they decided to take the plane and sent us home because they didn't know what was coming. The next day I came to Zumaia and went to Matthew Amsterdam. We didn't think it was going to go a lot, but the day after I came to Zumaia, the lehendakari here ordered the lockdown. Matthew squeezes less than me. “As we have time, we will create a ballet.” We were always on that intention, on the idea of creating something, but we didn't have time. Pandemic gave us time and we made Fordland.

Fordlandia was during the pandemic, and since then his second show, In the Still of the Night, has also come. The virus has shaped culture… In Pandemia,
here, culture has not been understood as a necessity or as a necessity, but as a luxury. It was not considered necessary, it was not considered a priority. Abroad, at least in other countries, this has not happened. Culture is education, it's important for both the mind and the heart. Here, on the other hand, it doesn't look like this, and it's a shame. I have been asked many times and I have always said the same thing: the cultural situation is not good, and the fault is ours, because we do not join, because we do not meet. In the dance world, to start with, everyone wants to do their own thing, and so we're not going anywhere. If we don't all meet, and we do strength, we won't have a voice. That's the problem. We have to meet, agree, help each other, strengthen and ask for things.

Who wants to do his thing, but not just dancing, or what?
Look, I've been told many times, by the ego of the dancer, or the artist. Dance, for me, is not work, but my life, I live with passion, but I don't come out of anybody's life, I just give a drop of happiness to people. So, I'm not so important or so special, I'm not a doctor or a surgeon, I'm a dancer and I don't leave anyone's life. What should I be in? So far I've been lucky enough to do what I wanted to do, and by the way, I've given a little happiness to people, I've helped live emotions and have a good time. Society considers it important, but we all have an important place in this society, in one way or another.

* * * * * * * * * * *

My father was “I
was two years old when my father died. It was a traffic accident. Itziar area. I was working at Elgoibar, at the bank. Every day I would walk from Zumaia to Elgoibar. He apparently made ice, and another car faced him. Since then, I grew up with my mother and my sister. If your sister is an artist? I don't know. He works at the bank, as our father was.”

My family
“I left home to study dance, I went from Zumaia to San Sebastian, I had to leave my family, and that is the lateral damage I received. On the other hand, that brought me closer to the family. We don't give value to what we have at hand, and I, on the other hand, stopped having my family at hand. This led me to appreciate our family even more.”

Last word

The Lucia and
Zumaia family are two of the most remote places in the world. Take two photos. One is that of parents, where parents appear, where Lucia lost her father's image when she was two years old. The other is that of the virgin of the Arritokieta, of Lucia fifteen years old, and when she was going to dance her mother gave her picture. Before the performance, when she's paling, Lucia always has two favorite photos looking at.