Duels of improvisers

You will be accompanied throughout this site by improvisers. During your visit: click on their photos to discover what they have to say.

"Following the Saint-Jean-de-Luz championship, Ernandorena organised other similar events. This created a kind of passion for improvisation. People began to ask for us for local village fêtes, events and other occasions.

At the beginning, I went with Iriarte, but he quickly lost interest before stopping forever. I also thought about stopping, saying to myself that I’d no longer go.

We didn’t earn a penny, and getting around was difficult because we didn’t have a car! Sometimes there were people around to take you, but rarely to give you a lift back home. There aren’t even any trains in our isolated villages, and at the time it was difficult getting back home when we were away.

At home, they put up with a lot due to my persistence to become an improviser. It wasn’t very good for our health either".

"At meetings you might feel a little shaky and get a tingling feeling inside, but it was never a problem.

It’s more problematic when you feel this way and it’s cold. You start shaking and you become even more nervous because you don’t know whether you’re shaking because of stage fright or the cold.

But a little adrenalin is good.

It helps you concentrate and it creates a situation which enables you to give your best"

"I began to improvise at the age of 8, and when I was 12 I gave it up before taking it up again when I was 15 in Hendaye. A new group had been formed, with a new teacher, and we also started going to Oiartzun.

Now that’s where we have our group and we go there regularly. We’ve always had a really good group and that’s the only way to develop an improvisation school. Improvisation is a pretext.

It’s not an essential part of life, so if you haven’t got a group which motivates you, it’s easy to give up. I can’t remember our first public performance, but I don’t have a bad memory of it, it didn’t traumatise me and that’s very important. When you’ve suffered doing something, you don’t want to continue. Nowadays, more than fright, I feel the adrenalin. And adrenalin is necessary. Too much relaxation isn’t good for improvisation. Your reflexes let you down and, just like being over nervous is bad, if you’re too relaxed you just freeze up.

So nerves are a good thing before starting until you face the audience. I like that that vertigo. It’s an intense moment"

"I remember the first time I performed in front of an audience. I was eleven years old, it was in Arrasate, in the final of the Basque Country inter-school championship.

I went up on to the stage wearing shorts … I was nervous, but, I didn’t feel any pressure at all. For me, improvisation has always been a game and I’ve never really apprehended it. I was more ashamed afterwards when the verses I’d improvised were read out!

It was a wonderful experience which could actually have been quite traumatising: at the age of eleven to suddenly find yourself in front of an audience, having to improvise verses, when that’s something you’ve never done before, in a championship, and being judged, also knowing that it’s all going to be published in the press … But in the end, the audience was very generous. Perhaps too generous. Until that time they’d always seen me as a girl, and a little girl at that, and that was enough for them. I must admit that, on the one hand, it suits me for them not to be too critical, but on the other hand, it’d be better if everyone was judged in the same way.

I won several prizes: in the inter-school championships, in the Northern Basque Country the Xenpelar prize and in September 2004 the Lizardi prize. The only one I’m really proud of is the last one. When I won it I said to myself: you really deserve this one!. It’s the first time I’ve ever really accepted winning an award"

"I remember the first time I improvised. I don’t know when it was, but I had to greet Sustrai Colina.

We were very young and they had an improvisation session. Although we had prepared beforehand, I was really frightened.

There were three friends with me, and they also had to do the same thing with the other improvisers present, and that was very difficult. Luckily you get used to it and eventually you take great pleasure in it.

Every year we take part in the inter-school championship reserved for the under 18’s. An eliminatory round was held in the Northern Basque Country and two or three of us made it into the final.

I have taken part regularly and it’s never easy"