Two weeks after entering I’m the best (TC Television)and with the experience of his first dance round, María José Blum feels that things have gone better than she expectedand awaits his next turn on stage, this Monday, January 30, with the tropical pop genre.
It is a challenge for her, who has been doing choreography for the last few years, but with a different orientation, for children, in the digital program guinguiringongo (in Youtube), in which he plays the character of Magito. There he had been able to use part of what he had learned in his youth, specifically in Jazz Dances, with José Miguel Salem. “I’m not a professional dancer, I don’t have a degree, but I have a base that works for me.”
Twenty years after being one of the winners of the musical reality pop stars (Teleamazon), María José found a transformed television. The first thing she noticed was the speed with which her audience expects content. “You have to give constant information, you can’t stop, always telling something, because if you don’t, you won’t get hooked.” If Kiruba was her school as a teenager, she is now happy to join what she calls “I’m the best little school”.
His arrival on the TC reality show “just happened,” he explains. It’s not the first time there, previously accompanied Juan Carlos Román in a special round in honor of national artists, including Kiruba. “He invited me to be part of the show, my friends from Kiruba sent a video, and months later they called me to make the proposal.”
He took a while to answer, because he was thinking about guinguiringongo. “It is a product that I take great care of, and also my image, which I have built for years.” One of its limits are erotic dances, costumes that expose it too much or songs with explicit lyrics. “It goes against who I am, and I would not do it for the world, I have a built image. I respect that each good one shows himself the way he wants, but personally I don’t feel comfortable ”.
He admits that he is concerned about the issue, but is optimistic. “I am seeing that everything is perfectly well placed; The choreographer who works with me (Jacobo Olaya) allows me to keep that line and I choose what I’m going to wear. I prefer to have an outfit according to who I am”.
And when a round of reggaeton arrives? It would be a big decision, he says. “Maybe I’ll have to put sensuality, because I think that sensuality and eroticism are different terms; I also think that the program takes care of that, because there are children who watch it”.
María José, Majito and Magito, three facets of an artist
Since the start of the pandemic, the project guinguiringongo began to structure. “I had in my head the idea of leaving a mark on children with a good quality product.; in those months we lost control with the children and let them see everything they could and consume digital media, because we were locked up. I feel like they saw more than they should have, a lot of rubbish information that casts them the wrong way.”
So they created a Show to which they imprinted the speed of current content for children, even has a profile on TikTok, and from there they make a crusade for good manners, “greeting, teamwork, not doing bullying (bullying)”.
with her is Prisca BustamanteMamina, Magito’s grandmother; maribel solinesin a fun version of the antagonistic Witch Maruja, and Alejandro Chavezthe friend with whom Magito lives his adventures and fulfills certain missions.
María José assures that she has always been the one who makes the decisions in labor matters. “I analyze the project very well, that it does not go against my essence, and now that I am a mother much more, because my daughters are going to grow up and I would like to be an example for themregardless of which path they take.”
She acknowledges that they urge her to get more involved in social networks, to publish more content, but that most of what is seen on her wall is her day to day. “I put up a story about cleaning my house, and people commented in surprise: ‘Majito, I didn’t know you did everything.’ I make my daughters’ lunch every day, I go to pick them up from school, I feed them and I go to the canal. I am an ordinary woman, a full-time ‘luchona’ mom. The professional part, which is coupled to my time as a mother, because my priority will always be my daughters and my husband.
That professional part includes his activity as one of the voices of the Emotion Bandwho on January 20 gave music to the Picnic Retro show at the Guayaquil Country Club.
In this group one of his classmates is also a competitor of I’m the best Juan Carlos Roman. “He was the one who ‘puffed’ me to go to the program, he told me ‘It’s cool, come on’”. And this is where María José shows that she is serious when she says that her professional time has limits. “The project (I’m the best) I took it for a short time, I wanted to see if it fit me, so I still couldn’t say how long I’m going to stay, but while I’m here, I’m going to give 100% of myself, I’m putting a lot of effort into it”.
What do your daughters (7 and 10 years old) think? “They are happy and support me fullthe first time they were excited and now they are waiting for me to dance again”.
Once Kiruba, always Kiruba: the group remains united, although the pandemic cut short their tour
By 2020, Kiruba had planned to tour to which they would incorporate their new songs (It left me, Soul). But in the pandemic, the members took different directions, says María José. “We have a WhatsApp group in which we always talk, because our camaraderie goes further, we are family, we grew and matured together.”
Giving concerts has been complicated, Gabriela Villalba is in Australia, Cecilia Calle in Miami, and Diana Rueda and Mariela Nazareno live in Quito. María José Blum is the only one who lives in Guayaquil. “We would like to, but let’s see.”
They believe that the Ecuadorian public also wants to see that reunion. “Sometimes I sing with the band (Emotion) a Kiruba song, and people go crazy.” The song that is requested the most is that of the debut, from 2003, I’d like. “It will always be an honor to play something by Kiruba, that’s where I was born.” (AND)