Nacho Duato

Nacho Duato, July 28, 2010

Juan Ignacio Duato Barcia (born January 8, 1957 in Valencia ), better known as Nacho Duato , is a Spanish ballet dancer and choreographer . From August 2014 to July 2018 he was artistic director of the Berlin State Ballet .

Life

Even as a boy Duato felt a tendency to dance, but there were hardly any opportunities in Spain at that time. To compensate, he practiced yoga and did gymnastics on the trapeze , among other things . Duato went to the Ballet Rambert school in London at the age of 18. In order to get to know other dance styles, he moved from London to Maurice Béjart's “Mudra School” in Brussels and from there to the Alvin Ailey Dance Center in New York.

In 1980 he began his first engagement as a dancer with the Cullberg Ballet in Stockholm . Jiří Kylián saw him there and one year later brought him to the Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT) in The Hague . During the 1980s he danced important roles with the NDT in most of Kylián's choreographies , but also in ballets by Hans van Manen and Ohad Naharin . With his first self-choreographed work Jardi Tancat (1983) he won first prize in the choreographic competition in Cologne in 1984.

With Jiří Kylián as his style role model, Duato choreographed at least one new piece every year for one of the then two companies of the NDT. Again and again he was inspired by the songs of his Catalan-speaking compatriot Maria del Mar Bonet , for example in 1988 for Arenal and a year later for Cor Perdut , a pas de deux .

In 1990 he took over the management of the Spanish Compañía Nacional de Danza, which the Spanish Ministry of Culture had proposed to him. From 1990 onwards, Duato choreographed primarily for the Compania Nacional de Danza and danced in his own pieces until 1996. One of his first pieces for the Compania Nacional de Danza was Coming Together for two compositions by the American Frederic Rezewski, which put political texts on minimal music like Steve Reich .

In 1992 Duato returned to the Nederlands Dans Theater as a guest choreographer to create a ballet called Duende using the music of Claude Debussy .

Just as the singer Maria del Mar Bonet was the musician of choice in Duato's early work in the 1980s, so was the composer Alberto Iglesias during the 1990s. In 1993 Duato's first choreography for Iglesias' songs, Cautiva , followed a year later with Tabulae , 1995 Cero sobre , 1997 “ Self ”.

In 1997, Duato choreographed Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, one of the “classic evening fillers” for the first time , then in 1999 a ballet to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach , but also the “Thomas Cantor”, under the German title Diversity - Forms of Silence and Emptiness brings the choreographer himself onto the stage.

From January 2011 to mid-2014 Duato was artistic director of the ballet at the Mikhailovsky Theater in Saint Petersburg . From the 2014/2015 season Nacho Duato was artistic director of the Berlin State Ballet. He staged Sleeping Beauty , Diversity , with the State Ballet . Forms of silence and emptiness , White Darkness Herrumbre , Castrati , The Nutcracker and his creations Static Time and Earth , followed in its fourth season 2017/2018 by Romeo and Juliet and Por vos muero .

reception

The International Dictionary of Modern Dance found that Duato had "broken the boundaries of musical Eurocentrism many times". The lexicon describes Duato as a “universal choreographer” who, using his Mediterranean roots, creates “both sensual and clear works” and often functions “as a shaman of powerful ancient rites”, which he translates “into a modern language”.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ “'The Movement', I wrote in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung at the time, 'is a virtuoso set on the music of the Spanish singer-songwriter Maria del Mar Bonet in semi-classical technique . Three rural couples gently and gracefully mourn their wasted lives'. But I wasn't completely happy with the choreography. The piece, I thought, was' perfectly copied 'from the virtuoso choreographies of Jiří Kylián, his grief' rather obtrusively staged, with a brilliance that seems to look over one's shoulder again and again and proudly confirm how beautiful and lyrical she succeeded in the funeral poses'. “Nacho Duato.
2. ^ Collaboration with Alberto Iglesias
3. ↑ Duato | Shechter. Retrieved October 18, 2017 . 
4. ↑ Nacho Duato. Retrieved October 18, 2017 . 

Web links

• Video from the play Multiplicity / Forms of Silence and Emptiness - Nacho Duato (Compañía Nacional de Danza Multiplicidad. Formas de Silencio Y Vacío Nacho Duato. 1999. Multiplicidad.)