Spain's national dance company performs an homage to Bach at Kennedy Center
By Lisa Traiger
Friday, May 14, 2010
Choreographer Nacho Duato wanted to show that Spanish culture was more than castanets and bullfights. And for a decade at the helm of Madrid's Compania Nacional de Danza, Spain's acclaimed national dance company, he has done just that.
Although some of Duato's works draw on Spain's rich culture, including its music -- such as "Jardi Tancat," his 1983 piece based on Catalonian folk tales -- CND is known as a sleek, contemporary troupe well-suited to its dynamic, multicultural home in Madrid.
The company has its Washington debut this weekend at the Kennedy Center, performing Duato's "Bach: Multiplicity. Forms of Silence and Emptiness," an evening-length homage to the German composer.
The piece loosely interprets Bach's life as it reinvents his musical choices through expansive, liquid movement. A corps of seated dancers becomes the instruments of an orchestra, stretching, bending, bowing, sweeping and literally playing their bodies. Duato reenvisions a cello solo as a duet for a seated dancer who bows across his partner's body.
"It was difficult to use such incredible music," Duato admits. ". . . Through time Bach has been interpreted and reinterpreted in so many ways. I almost didn't want to put my dirty hands on his work."
Duato, 52, who will be leaving his artistic director's post at the end of this season, dances a prologue and epilogue in the two-part work. "I wanted to include myself in the beginning and to end it, so I dance a solo that asks [Bach] for his permission to use his music and for forgiveness for my own foolishness in choreographing to his music. In the end, of course, he dies, and I return to thank him."
For a choreographer who has spent his life in dance studios inventing, crafting, devising and fine-tuning movement, it comes as a shock to hear Duato say, unequivocally: "I think dance is a great art form, but music is the greater of the arts. . . . Dance would not exist without music."
He adds: "My work may be contemporary, but I am very traditional. The ballet as an art form is in a way traditional and is really dependent on the music. Of course, I choreograph in a contemporary way because through time Bach has been interpreted in so many ways."
Leaving the company was not Duato's choice -- the Spanish government wants to take the troupe in a different direction, reportedly by presenting more classical ballets -- so he cut short his contract by a year.
"I love my dancers and we believe in the same vision. That I will miss very much," he says. "I didn't want to stay around another year and see how they dig my grave."
But as Duato readies himself for a new phase of his career, he looks back on his decade at CND with pride and says he is stepping down on a high note, and with optimism.
"For the first time in my life, I'm going to have a month vacation in August. I'm going to the beach."
