Dance Madrid: Nacho Duato’s Compania Nacional de Danza

Uncategorized — By on November 17, 2008 1:00 am

Nacho Duato’s Compañía Nacional de Danza
By Emily Macel

Nacho Duato once said in an interview that the focus of his work is “the body expressing the emotion of the music; my dances are inspired by human relationships of everyday life.” In another interview Duato, artistic director of Compañía Nacional de Danza, said, “when people come to see us at the theater, they should see themselves reflected on the stage.”

Duato delivers what he hopes to accomplish. When watching his work, you find yourself saying, “I’ve felt like that before.” His choreography isn’t so straightforward in it’s storytelling— but the emotion prevails. Fear, heartache, joy—these are the feelings that seep off the stage and affect us as viewers.

In Nacho Duato’s Without Words, a section of a beautiful pas de deux revels in the intimacy between two dancers. Their limbs become inseparable, unidentifiable of whose is whose. Their movements echo one another’s, like shadows. Duato plays with the music of great composers. Debussy and Bach’s overtures are given new life when incorporated in his productions. In fact, in Without Words, a Schubert score is deconstructed, and words rather than notes are heard. It’s this kind of experimentation and playfulness that makes watching Nacho Duato’s choreography so captivating.

Duato’s company, the Compañía Nacional de Danza is a treasure, and recognized as one of Europe’s finest contemporary ballet companies. Founded in 1979 by the Spanish Ministry of Culture, the then Ballet Nacional de Espana Clasico built its company from a wide range of dancers with a variety of training and style specialties. The artistic directors that came before Duato laid a foundation of Spanish and classical work: Victor Ullate, a Spanish dancer who also performed with Bejart’s Ballet of the Twentieth Century; Maria de Avila, who brought to the company classical work from George Balanchine and Antony Tudor; and the great Russian prima ballerina Maya Plisetskaya, who brought works from her classical Russian roots. Because of the lack of unified direction, for the first 16 years of the company’s existence it was unclear what they were all about. But when Duato stepped in, in 1990—at the peak of his performance career—the direction became clear. He would contemporize the company.

Born in Valencia, Spain, Duato, now 51, came to the company after a lengthy career with Netherlands Dance Theater. He was 33 at the time, and having come from a more contemporary background than his predecessors, he veered away from traditional classical ballet, and turned to inspiration from his mentors, Mats Ek, Ohan Naharin, Jiri Kylian, and Alvin Ailey. He trained at the Rambert School in London, then continued to train at Mudra, Bejart’s school in Brussels, then he studied Graham and Horton modern dance techniques in New York City at the Alvin Ailey American Dance School. He danced in the Cullberg Ballet for Ek in Stockholm. Then when Kylian invited him to join the highly contemporary sleek Netherlands Dance Theater, Duato leapt at the opportunity and stayed there for ten years. These influences are palpable in Duato’s work. In Arenal, the women are dressed nearly in prairie dresses. As they slap cupped hands to their thighs while turning their heads away from the men, one can see the similarities between these dancers and Martha Graham’s dancers in Appalachian Spring, or Ailey’s dancers in Revelations.  

An undeniable force in the contemporary dance world, Nacho Duato has more than 25 choreographic works to his name. His work has been performed by many companies including: the American Ballet Theatre, Cullberg Ballet, Nederlands Dans Theater, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, Dutch Opera Ballet, Australian Ballet, Stuttgart Ballet, Ballet Gulbenkian, Finnish Opera Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Royal Ballet, and Paris Opera Ballet. In 1999, Duato formed a second company, Compañía Nacional de Danza 2, as a training ground for pre-professional dancers. The second company tours internationally as well.

The Compañía Nacional de Danza is currently on tour in Italy and Japan, and returns to Spain to perform at the Teatro Jovellanos in Gijon, Dec. 12–13. CND2 performs in Spain at Auditorio de Sa Màniga, Dec. 5¬–6. See http://cndanza.mcu.es.

 

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