Carlos Iturrioz | Mediart Productions
1981
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MEDIART PRODUCTIONS collaborating with the following choreographers

NACHO DUATO

MEDIART PRODUCTIONS in collaboration with NACHO DUATO

ARGENTINA

BALLET DEL TEATRO COLON

Buenos Aires
POR VOS MUERO

POR VOS MUERO

World premiere 11 April  1996, Compañía Nacional de Danza, teatro de Madrid.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Jordi Savall
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel
Texto Garcilaso de la Vega
Voz: Miguel Bosé

Duato has inspired in old Spanish music of XV and XVI centuries together with some of the most beautiful verses of the Spanish poet Garcilaso de la Vega. Music and poetry connect the obvious contemporary dance of Por Vos Muero to his historic reference.

In XV and XVI centuries dances formed part of the cultural expression of people, including all social hierarchies, and therefore they produced a honest reflection of culture of that time. Por Vos Muero wants to pay a tribute to the very important role that dance played in every sort of social event during those ancient times.

PERFORMED on 21 June, 2016

AUSTRALIA

THE AUSTRALIAN BALLET

Melbourne
JARDI TANCAT

JARDI TANCAT

World premiere 19 December 1983, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: María del Mar Bonet
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED AT on 21 June, 2016
POR VOS MUERO

POR VOS MUERO

World premiere 11 April  1996, Compañía Nacional de Danza, teatro de Madrid.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Jordi Savall
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel
Texto Garcilaso de la Vega
Voz: Miguel Bosé

Duato has inspired in old Spanish music of XV and XVI centuries together with some of the most beautiful verses of the Spanish poet Garcilaso de la Vega. Music and poetry connect the obvious contemporary dance of Por Vos Muero to his historic reference.

In XV and XVI centuries dances formed part of the cultural expression of people, including all social hierarchies, and therefore they produced a honest reflection of culture of that time. Por Vos Muero wants to pay a tribute to the very important role that dance played in every sort of social event during those ancient times.

PERFORMED on 11 Sept, 1998

THE WEST AUSTRALIAN ACADEMY OF PERFORMING ARTS

Perth
JARDI TANCAT

JARDI TANCAT

World premiere 19 December 1983, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: María del Mar Bonet
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on NOV 17, 2008

BRAZIL

SAO PAULO COMPANHIA DE DANCA

SAO PAULO
POR VOS MUERO

POR VOS MUERO

World premiere 11 April  1996, Compañía Nacional de Danza, teatro de Madrid.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Jordi Savall
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel
Texto Garcilaso de la Vega
Voz: Miguel Bosé

Duato has inspired in old Spanish music of XV and XVI centuries together with some of the most beautiful verses of the Spanish poet Garcilaso de la Vega. Music and poetry connect the obvious contemporary dance of Por Vos Muero to his historic reference.

In XV and XVI centuries dances formed part of the cultural expression of people, including all social hierarchies, and therefore they produced a honest reflection of culture of that time. Por Vos Muero wants to pay a tribute to the very important role that dance played in every sort of social event during those ancient times.

PERFORMED on JUNE 6, 2013
GNAWA

GNAWA

World premiere 9 September 1993, Hubbard Street Dance Street ( Chicago-USA)
Premiere performance by the Hubbard Street Dance Chicago at the Joan W. and Irving B. Harris Theater for Music and Dance, March 2005
Premiered by the Compañía Nacional de Danza 2 at the Teatro Gran Vía, Madrid, the 18th of April 2007

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: collage
Costumes: Luis Devota y Modesto Lomba
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

In 1992 in his home city of Valencia, Nacho Duato premiered Mediterrania, searching deeper into his roots and those of his forebears, and his sense of complicity with the Mediterranean Sea.

In Gnawa, premiered by the Hubbard Street Dance Chicago in 2005, the renowned choreographer has continued along the path he set out on with Mediterrania, seeking to transmit, through the medium of movement, the sensuality of the landscape, the true nature of its peoples. With a suggestive musical score replete with Spanish and North African sounds, Gnawa captivates its audience through its all-encompassing power and its sensual elegance, combining the spirituality and organic rhythm of the Mediterranean.

Gnawa is the name that receives in Morocco and other parts of the Magreb the members of different mystic Muslim brotherhoods characterized by their sub-saharian origin and the use of song, dances and syncretic rituals as a mean to reach ecstasy. This term also refers to a musical style of sub-saharian reminiscences practised by these brotherhoods or by musicians inspired by them. It is considered one of the main Moroccan Folklore genres.  

 

PERFORMED on MARCH 26, 2009

CANADA

LES GRANDS BALLETS CANADIENS

MONTREAL
DUENDE

DUENDE

World premiere 21 November 1991, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague.
PREMIERE BY COMPAÑÍA NACIONAL DE DANZA AT THE TEATRO LÍRICO NACIONAL LA ZARZUELA, 11 DECEMBER, 1992

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Claude Debussy
Scenery: Walter Nobbe
Costumes: Susan Unger
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

Duato’s ‘ideas’ for a choreography are almost always preceded by his choice in music, which characterises his working method. Maybe this applies to Duende in particular, because the music was the only source of inspiration for this ballet. Long ago Duato fell in love with Debussy, especially by the way the composer makes nature sound in music. When he listens to this music, Duato visualises shapes, not people, relationships or events. This is why he considers Duende as an almost sculptural work: a body, a movement, that goes with the tune.

 

Duende literally means elfs and fairies, like the ones who tidy up children’s toys at night, but it can also mean rascal, a naughty child. One can also possess duende, when radiating energy and great charm, almost having a magical attraction. In Andalusia it is said flamenco has duende, which can hardly be translated into another language. Flamenco has a touch of spell, one might say, like the way black music has ‘soul’.

 

At the beginning of twentieth century Debussy was an unknown composer, and the public was suddenly listening to absolutely different sounds .Strange, beautiful and magical, as they must have been, these sounds have identified his complex cultural roots. Debussy’s music reveals classic and romantic origins apart from connections with lay music, the folk songs, Arab, eastern and slave cultures, and even with jazz.

 

Classicism may simply be explained as consecrated to form. In this sense, Romanticism is usually defined as the expression of emotions. However, the relationship between Debussy and these two concepts is not always as simple. Form and emotion are always present in his music, but more as the result of a process of insinuation than one of definition. In one of his rules for composers, Debussy wrote: “Discipline must be looked for in freedom”, this could be considered his first command.

 

Debussy is frequently identified with the impressionist artistic movement: but whereas painters like Monet gave a great importance to light, Debussy was mainly interested by the quality and effect of sound. Comments of Debussy about Stravinsky were that “he was widening the borders of the allowed in the empire of sound”, and this could undoubtedly be referred to in his own work.

PERFORMED on MARCH 3, 2012
COR PERDUT

COR PERDUT

First performed by the Nederlands Dans Theater 2 in The Hague on 27 April, 1989

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: María del Mar Bonet after M.J.Berberian
Costumes: Nacho Duato
Lighting Design: Nacho Duato

Cor Perdut is a duet inspired on the song Bir Demet Yasemen, in the catalonian version done by mallorcan singer María del Mar Bonet from the original theme by M.J. Berberian. “It is not worth to cry /it is not worth to die / since desire is much stronger / just follow its own path”, sings the wonderful voice of María del Mar Bonet, whose enchanting power dominates Duato´s piece who has created this choreography as a birthday gift to the singer. Following the syncopated and hypnotic rhythm of the tunisian percussions the dancers recreates the dynamic and expressive body vocabulary of the choreographer perfectly matching the fluidity and sensuality of the singer´s voice.

PERFORMED on SEP 7, 1996
NA FLORESTA

NA FLORESTA

World premiere 15 February 1990, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Heitor Villalobos ( Wagner Tisso)
Costumes: Nacho Duato
Scenery: Walter Nobbe
Lighting. Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on MARCH 13, 1997
JARDI TANCAT

JARDI TANCAT

World premiere 19 December 1983, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: María del Mar Bonet
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on MAY 3, 1994
WITHOUT WORDS

WITHOUT WORDS

World premiere 29 October 1998, American Ballet Theatre, City Center Theatre (New York).

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Franz Schubert
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Brad Fields

PERFORMED on APR 13, 2000

THE NATIONAL BALLET SCHOOL

TORONTO
JARDI TANCAT

JARDI TANCAT

World premiere 19 December 1983, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: María del Mar Bonet
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on MAY 26, 2011

CROATIA

CROATIAN NATIONAL THEATRE

ZAGREB
POR VOS MUERO

POR VOS MUERO

World premiere 11 April  1996, Compañía Nacional de Danza, teatro de Madrid.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Jordi Savall
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel
Texto Garcilaso de la Vega
Voz: Miguel Bosé

Duato has inspired in old Spanish music of XV and XVI centuries together with some of the most beautiful verses of the Spanish poet Garcilaso de la Vega. Music and poetry connect the obvious contemporary dance of Por Vos Muero to his historic reference.

In XV and XVI centuries dances formed part of the cultural expression of people, including all social hierarchies, and therefore they produced a honest reflection of culture of that time. Por Vos Muero wants to pay a tribute to the very important role that dance played in every sort of social event during those ancient times.

PERFORMED on JUNE 6, 2013
NA FLORESTA

NA FLORESTA

World premiere 15 February 1990, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Heitor Villalobos ( Wagner Tisso)
Costumes: Nacho Duato
Scenery: Walter Nobbe
Lighting. Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on MAY 30, 2008

CZECH REPUBLIC

NATIONAL THEATRE BRNO

Prague
JARDI TANCAT

JARDI TANCAT

World premiere 19 December 1983, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: María del Mar Bonet
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on NOV 21, 2002

NATIONAL THEATRE BRNO

Brno
GNAWA

GNAWA

World premiere 9 September 1993, Hubbard Street Dance Street ( Chicago-USA)
Premiere performance by the Hubbard Street Dance Chicago at the Joan W. and Irving B. Harris Theater for Music and Dance, March 2005
Premiered by the Compañía Nacional de Danza 2 at the Teatro Gran Vía, Madrid, the 18th of April 2007

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: collage
Costumes: Luis Devota y Modesto Lomba
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

In 1992 in his home city of Valencia, Nacho Duato premiered Mediterrania, searching deeper into his roots and those of his forebears, and his sense of complicity with the Mediterranean Sea.

In Gnawa, premiered by the Hubbard Street Dance Chicago in 2005, the renowned choreographer has continued along the path he set out on with Mediterrania, seeking to transmit, through the medium of movement, the sensuality of the landscape, the true nature of its peoples. With a suggestive musical score replete with Spanish and North African sounds, Gnawa captivates its audience through its all-encompassing power and its sensual elegance, combining the spirituality and organic rhythm of the Mediterranean.

Gnawa is the name that receives in Morocco and other parts of the Magreb the members of different mystic Muslim brotherhoods characterized by their sub-saharian origin and the use of song, dances and syncretic rituals as a mean to reach ecstasy. This term also refers to a musical style of sub-saharian reminiscences practised by these brotherhoods or by musicians inspired by them. It is considered one of the main Moroccan Folklore genres.  

 

PERFORMED on MARCH 9, 2018

DENMARK

ROYAL DANISH BALLET

Copenhague
JARDI TANCAT

JARDI TANCAT

World premiere 19 December 1983, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: María del Mar Bonet
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on MAY, 1999
Coming togheter

COMING TOGETHER

World premiere by Compañía Nacional de Danza at Teatro de la Zarzuela, Madrid, 23 December 1991.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Frederic Rzewski(Coming Together)
Sets and Costumes: Nacho Duato
Light Design: Nicolás Fischtel


The turbulent repetition of musical structures and recited text from the Frederic Rzewski’s frantic composition provides with the accompaniment and counterpoint to an abstract work by Nacho Duato who uses his effervescence both to bring us closer to furious frenzy and hysterics, and as a contrast in his creation of oniric atmospheres. Both phenomenons appear alternatively as well as simultaneously as it could happen with the rhythms and sensations which develop within a big city.

 

The result, of an obvious comtemporary style, forces the spectator to focus his attention on the multiple changes of the choreographic process as well as on the system and structure of steps, instead of the ordinary descriptive and narrative elements.

 

Frederic Rzewski’s piece entitled Coming Together and Attica written for narrator and instruments, to be performed ad libitum in two parts, is of crucial importance in the history of repetitive music and not only because of its obvious influence on later pieces. Here the repetitive techniques and structuring are not an end in themselves but the means of creating a coherent musical, dramatic world. While this piece just like Rzewski’s other works makes use of improvisation and repetition it is also a committed work both in the social and the political sense. Rzewski managed to combine the political, ideological meaning of the text and the musical structure into a homogeneous whole by means of an original “minimal” idea.

 

The eight sentences from a letter by Sam Melville (a political prisoner killed in the 1971 Attica prison riots) are first narrated in an additive then in a deductive progression. The title of the piece is a reference to a sentence of the letter and to the technique of musical improvisation.

PERFORMED on MAY 8, 2008

FINLAND

FINNISH NATIONAL BALLET

Helsinki
MULTIPLICITY

MULTIPLICITY, FORMS OF SILENCE AND EMPTINESS

World premiere at Viehauktionshalle ( Weimar-Germany), 23 April, 1999.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Johan Sebastian Bach (collage)
Sets: Jaffar Al Chalabi (based on an original idea of Nacho Duato)
Costumes: Nacho Duato (in collaboration with Ismael Aznar)
Light Design: Brad Fields

MULTIPLICITY is the result of the coproduction between the city of Weimar -European Cultural Capital in 1999-  and the CND. A ballet was commissioned to Nacho Duato which somehow had some special link with the city. For Duato the answer could only be one: Bach.  Nacho’s ballet is therefore inspired in the music and life of  Johan Sebastian Bach and is divided into two parts.

The first one, Multiplicity, is a choreographic reflexion which arises mainly from the wonderful music of the brilliant composer. This first part is characterized by a choreographic variety and diversity which matches the linked different musical excerpts by Bach. Continuos changes in costumes and settings highlight visually this musical collage.

The second part, Forms of silence and emptiness, maintains a more introspective tone, more mystic and spiritual, reflecting upon the subject of the death, so present in the work of Bach. Musically speaking it is based mainly on the Arte of Fugue.

PERFORMED on MAY 6, 2016
DUENDE

DUENDE

World premiere 21 November 1991, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague.
PREMIERE BY COMPAÑÍA NACIONAL DE DANZA AT THE TEATRO LÍRICO NACIONAL LA ZARZUELA, 11 DECEMBER, 1992

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Claude Debussy
Scenery: Walter Nobbe
Costumes: Susan Unger
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

Duato’s ‘ideas’ for a choreography are almost always preceded by his choice in music, which characterises his working method. Maybe this applies to Duende in particular, because the music was the only source of inspiration for this ballet. Long ago Duato fell in love with Debussy, especially by the way the composer makes nature sound in music. When he listens to this music, Duato visualises shapes, not people, relationships or events. This is why he considers Duende as an almost sculptural work: a body, a movement, that goes with the tune.

 

Duende literally means elfs and fairies, like the ones who tidy up children’s toys at night, but it can also mean rascal, a naughty child. One can also possess duende, when radiating energy and great charm, almost having a magical attraction. In Andalusia it is said flamenco has duende, which can hardly be translated into another language. Flamenco has a touch of spell, one might say, like the way black music has ‘soul’.

 

At the beginning of twentieth century Debussy was an unknown composer, and the public was suddenly listening to absolutely different sounds .Strange, beautiful and magical, as they must have been, these sounds have identified his complex cultural roots. Debussy’s music reveals classic and romantic origins apart from connections with lay music, the folk songs, Arab, eastern and slave cultures, and even with jazz.

 

Classicism may simply be explained as consecrated to form. In this sense, Romanticism is usually defined as the expression of emotions. However, the relationship between Debussy and these two concepts is not always as simple. Form and emotion are always present in his music, but more as the result of a process of insinuation than one of definition. In one of his rules for composers, Debussy wrote: “Discipline must be looked for in freedom”, this could be considered his first command.

 

Debussy is frequently identified with the impressionist artistic movement: but whereas painters like Monet gave a great importance to light, Debussy was mainly interested by the quality and effect of sound. Comments of Debussy about Stravinsky were that “he was widening the borders of the allowed in the empire of sound”, and this could undoubtedly be referred to in his own work.

PERFORMED on MAY 16, 1997

FRANCE

OPERA DE PARIS

Paris
WHITE DARKNESS

WHITE DARKNESS

World premiere 16 November 2001, Compañía Nacional de Danza, Teatro de la Zarzuela de Madrid.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Karl Jenkins
Costumes: Lourdes Frías
Scenery: Jaafar Chalabi
Lighting: Joop Caboort

PERFORMED on NOVEMBER 10, 2006

BALLET DU RHIN

POR VOS MUERO

POR VOS MUERO

World premiere 11 April  1996, Compañía Nacional de Danza, teatro de Madrid.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Jordi Savall
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel
Texto Garcilaso de la Vega
Voz: Miguel Bosé

Duato has inspired in old Spanish music of XV and XVI centuries together with some of the most beautiful verses of the Spanish poet Garcilaso de la Vega. Music and poetry connect the obvious contemporary dance of Por Vos Muero to his historic reference.

In XV and XVI centuries dances formed part of the cultural expression of people, including all social hierarchies, and therefore they produced a honest reflection of culture of that time. Por Vos Muero wants to pay a tribute to the very important role that dance played in every sort of social event during those ancient times.

PERFORMED on JANUARY 19, 2006

BALLET D’EUROPE

COR PERDUT

COR PERDUT

First performed by the Nederlands Dans Theater 2 in The Hague on 27 April, 1989

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: María del Mar Bonet after M.J.Berberian
Costumes: Nacho Duato
Lighting Design: Nacho Duato

Cor Perdut is a duet inspired on the song Bir Demet Yasemen, in the catalonian version done by mallorcan singer María del Mar Bonet from the original theme by M.J. Berberian. “It is not worth to cry /it is not worth to die / since desire is much stronger / just follow its own path”, sings the wonderful voice of María del Mar Bonet, whose enchanting power dominates Duato´s piece who has created this choreography as a birthday gift to the singer. Following the syncopated and hypnotic rhythm of the tunisian percussions the dancers recreates the dynamic and expressive body vocabulary of the choreographer perfectly matching the fluidity and sensuality of the singer´s voice.

PERFORMED on NOVEMBER 5, 2006

EUROPA DANSE

JARDI TANCAT

JARDI TANCAT

World premiere 19 December 1983, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: María del Mar Bonet
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on JULY 31, 1999
DUENDE

DUENDE

World premiere 21 November 1991, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague.
PREMIERE BY COMPAÑÍA NACIONAL DE DANZA AT THE TEATRO LÍRICO NACIONAL LA ZARZUELA, 11 DECEMBER, 1992

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Claude Debussy
Scenery: Walter Nobbe
Costumes: Susan Unger
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

Duato’s ‘ideas’ for a choreography are almost always preceded by his choice in music, which characterises his working method. Maybe this applies to Duende in particular, because the music was the only source of inspiration for this ballet. Long ago Duato fell in love with Debussy, especially by the way the composer makes nature sound in music. When he listens to this music, Duato visualises shapes, not people, relationships or events. This is why he considers Duende as an almost sculptural work: a body, a movement, that goes with the tune.

 

Duende literally means elfs and fairies, like the ones who tidy up children’s toys at night, but it can also mean rascal, a naughty child. One can also possess duende, when radiating energy and great charm, almost having a magical attraction. In Andalusia it is said flamenco has duende, which can hardly be translated into another language. Flamenco has a touch of spell, one might say, like the way black music has ‘soul’.

 

At the beginning of twentieth century Debussy was an unknown composer, and the public was suddenly listening to absolutely different sounds .Strange, beautiful and magical, as they must have been, these sounds have identified his complex cultural roots. Debussy’s music reveals classic and romantic origins apart from connections with lay music, the folk songs, Arab, eastern and slave cultures, and even with jazz.

 

Classicism may simply be explained as consecrated to form. In this sense, Romanticism is usually defined as the expression of emotions. However, the relationship between Debussy and these two concepts is not always as simple. Form and emotion are always present in his music, but more as the result of a process of insinuation than one of definition. In one of his rules for composers, Debussy wrote: “Discipline must be looked for in freedom”, this could be considered his first command.

 

Debussy is frequently identified with the impressionist artistic movement: but whereas painters like Monet gave a great importance to light, Debussy was mainly interested by the quality and effect of sound. Comments of Debussy about Stravinsky were that “he was widening the borders of the allowed in the empire of sound”, and this could undoubtedly be referred to in his own work.

PERFORMED on AUGUST 4, 2006
SINFONIA INDIA

SINFONIA INDIA

World premiere 7 June 1984, The Netherlands Dance Theater, Circus Theatre Scheveningen.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Carlos Chávez
Costumes: Nacho Duato
Scenery: Walter Nobbe
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on AUGUST 4, 2006

BALLET DE L’OPERA DE LYON

GAVINES I DRAGONS

GAVINES I DRAGONS

 

PERFORMED on JUNE 24, 2003
JARDI TANCAT

JARDI TANCAT

World premiere 19 December 1983, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: María del Mar Bonet
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on NOVEMBER 7, 1997
RASSEMBLEMENT

RASSEMBLEMENT

World premiere 27 February 1990, The Cullberg Ballet ( Stockholm), Hjalmar Bergman theatre ( Örebro)

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Toto Bissainthe
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on FEBRUARY 12, 1999
REMANSOS

REMANSOS

World premiere 5 Junio 1998, American Ballet Theatre ( New York), The City Center Theatre.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Enrique Granados
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Brad Fields/Nicolás Fischtel

First presented by American Ballet Theater, at City Center of New York on 5 November, 1997 and by Compañía Nacional de Danza of Spain at Teatro de Madrid, on 5 June, 1998.

Remanso, based on Poetic Watzes by Enrique Granados, has got major reception by audience and especialized critics.

Expresive power, geometry of lines, dinamics of space and forms, were some of the remarks about Duato´s work. From that very first version, Duato has extended the ballet for Compañía Nacional de Danza, transforming it into REMANSOS. Based on the music of Enrique Granados and inspired in the universe of Federico García Lorca Remansos, full of inventiviness, offers the observer a constant wink based on the perspicacity of movement.

PERFORMED on APRIL 17, 2001
WITHOUT WORDS

WITHOUT WORDS

World premiere 29 October 1998, American Ballet Theatre, City Center Theatre (New York).

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Franz Schubert
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Brad Fields

PERFORMED on JAPRIL 17, 2001

BALLET DE MARSEILLE

POR VOS MUERO

POR VOS MUERO

World premiere 11 April  1996, Compañía Nacional de Danza, teatro de Madrid.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Jordi Savall
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel
Texto Garcilaso de la Vega
Voz: Miguel Bosé

Duato has inspired in old Spanish music of XV and XVI centuries together with some of the most beautiful verses of the Spanish poet Garcilaso de la Vega. Music and poetry connect the obvious contemporary dance of Por Vos Muero to his historic reference.

In XV and XVI centuries dances formed part of the cultural expression of people, including all social hierarchies, and therefore they produced a honest reflection of culture of that time. Por Vos Muero wants to pay a tribute to the very important role that dance played in every sort of social event during those ancient times.

PERFORMED on MARCH 28, 2007

BALLET DE NANCY

JARDI TANCAT

JARDI TANCAT

World premiere 19 December 1983, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: María del Mar Bonet
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on JUNE 23, 2000

BALLET DE L’OPERA DE NICE

GNAWA

GNAWA

World premiere 9 September 1993, Hubbard Street Dance Street ( Chicago-USA)
Premiere performance by the Hubbard Street Dance Chicago at the Joan W. and Irving B. Harris Theater for Music and Dance, March 2005
Premiered by the Compañía Nacional de Danza 2 at the Teatro Gran Vía, Madrid, the 18th of April 2007

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: collage
Costumes: Luis Devota y Modesto Lomba
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

In 1992 in his home city of Valencia, Nacho Duato premiered Mediterrania, searching deeper into his roots and those of his forebears, and his sense of complicity with the Mediterranean Sea.

In Gnawa, premiered by the Hubbard Street Dance Chicago in 2005, the renowned choreographer has continued along the path he set out on with Mediterrania, seeking to transmit, through the medium of movement, the sensuality of the landscape, the true nature of its peoples. With a suggestive musical score replete with Spanish and North African sounds, Gnawa captivates its audience through its all-encompassing power and its sensual elegance, combining the spirituality and organic rhythm of the Mediterranean.

Gnawa is the name that receives in Morocco and other parts of the Magreb the members of different mystic Muslim brotherhoods characterized by their sub-saharian origin and the use of song, dances and syncretic rituals as a mean to reach ecstasy. This term also refers to a musical style of sub-saharian reminiscences practised by these brotherhoods or by musicians inspired by them. It is considered one of the main Moroccan Folklore genres.  

 

PERFORMED on JULY 3, 2012
POR VOS MUERO

POR VOS MUERO

World premiere 11 April  1996, Compañía Nacional de Danza, teatro de Madrid.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Jordi Savall
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel
Texto Garcilaso de la Vega
Voz: Miguel Bosé

Duato has inspired in old Spanish music of XV and XVI centuries together with some of the most beautiful verses of the Spanish poet Garcilaso de la Vega. Music and poetry connect the obvious contemporary dance of Por Vos Muero to his historic reference.

In XV and XVI centuries dances formed part of the cultural expression of people, including all social hierarchies, and therefore they produced a honest reflection of culture of that time. Por Vos Muero wants to pay a tribute to the very important role that dance played in every sort of social event during those ancient times.

PERFORMED on OCTOBER 20, 2011

BALLET DU CAPITOLE

Toulose
NA FLORESTA

NA FLORESTA

World premiere 15 February 1990, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Heitor Villalobos ( Wagner Tisso)
Costumes: Nacho Duato
Scenery: Walter Nobbe
Lighting. Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on MAY 13, 1999
POR VOS MUERO

POR VOS MUERO

World premiere 11 April  1996, Compañía Nacional de Danza, teatro de Madrid.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Jordi Savall
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel
Texto Garcilaso de la Vega
Voz: Miguel Bosé

Duato has inspired in old Spanish music of XV and XVI centuries together with some of the most beautiful verses of the Spanish poet Garcilaso de la Vega. Music and poetry connect the obvious contemporary dance of Por Vos Muero to his historic reference.

In XV and XVI centuries dances formed part of the cultural expression of people, including all social hierarchies, and therefore they produced a honest reflection of culture of that time. Por Vos Muero wants to pay a tribute to the very important role that dance played in every sort of social event during those ancient times.

PERFORMED on APRIL 14, 2011

GERMANY

STAATS BALLETT BERLIN

ARCANGELO

ARCANGELO

World Premiere by Compañía Nacional de Danza at Teatro Real de Madrid, 31 May, 2000

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Arcangelo Corelli (Concerti Grossi Op. 6), Domenico Scarlatti (Il primo omicidio)
Light: Brad Fields
Costumes : Nacho Duato in collaboration with Ismael Aznar
Scenery: Nacho Duato
Length Of Performance: 32 min

PERFORMED on APRIL 27, 2012

CANTATA

PERFORMED on AUGUST 2, 2012
WITHOUT WORDS

WITHOUT WORDS

World premiere 29 October 1998, American Ballet Theatre, City Center Theatre (New York).

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Franz Schubert
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Brad Fields

PERFORMED on MAY 3, 2003

ERIC GAUTHIER DANCE CO.

Stuttgart
VIOLONCELLO

VIOLONCELLO

 

PERFORMED on MARCH 1, 2017

AALTO BALLET

Essen
JARDI TANCAT

JARDI TANCAT

World premiere 19 December 1983, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: María del Mar Bonet
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on FEBRUARY 8, 1997

HAMBURG BALLET

REMANSO

REMANSO

World premiere 5 November 1997, American Ballet Theatre ( New York), The City Center Theatre.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Enrique Granados
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Brad Fields

First presented by American Ballet Theater, at City Center of New York on 5 November, 1997 and by Compañía Nacional de Danza of Spain at Teatro de Madrid, on 5 June, 1998.

Remanso, based on Poetic Watzes by Enrique Granados, has got major reception by audience and especialized critics.

Expresive power, geometry of lines, dinamics of space and forms, were some of the remarks about Duato´s work. From that very first version, Duato has extended the ballet for Compañía Nacional de Danza, transforming it into REMANSOS. Based on the music of Enrique Granados and inspired in the universe of Federico García Lorca Remansos, full of inventiviness, offers the observer a constant wink based on the perspicacity of movement.

PERFORMED on JUNE 27, 1999

BALLETT STAATS OPER HANNOVER

DUENDE

DUENDE

World premiere 21 November 1991, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague.
PREMIERE BY COMPAÑÍA NACIONAL DE DANZA AT THE TEATRO LÍRICO NACIONAL LA ZARZUELA, 11 DECEMBER, 1992

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Claude Debussy
Scenery: Walter Nobbe
Costumes: Susan Unger
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

Duato’s ‘ideas’ for a choreography are almost always preceded by his choice in music, which characterises his working method. Maybe this applies to Duende in particular, because the music was the only source of inspiration for this ballet. Long ago Duato fell in love with Debussy, especially by the way the composer makes nature sound in music. When he listens to this music, Duato visualises shapes, not people, relationships or events. This is why he considers Duende as an almost sculptural work: a body, a movement, that goes with the tune.

 

Duende literally means elfs and fairies, like the ones who tidy up children’s toys at night, but it can also mean rascal, a naughty child. One can also possess duende, when radiating energy and great charm, almost having a magical attraction. In Andalusia it is said flamenco has duende, which can hardly be translated into another language. Flamenco has a touch of spell, one might say, like the way black music has ‘soul’.

 

At the beginning of twentieth century Debussy was an unknown composer, and the public was suddenly listening to absolutely different sounds .Strange, beautiful and magical, as they must have been, these sounds have identified his complex cultural roots. Debussy’s music reveals classic and romantic origins apart from connections with lay music, the folk songs, Arab, eastern and slave cultures, and even with jazz.

 

Classicism may simply be explained as consecrated to form. In this sense, Romanticism is usually defined as the expression of emotions. However, the relationship between Debussy and these two concepts is not always as simple. Form and emotion are always present in his music, but more as the result of a process of insinuation than one of definition. In one of his rules for composers, Debussy wrote: “Discipline must be looked for in freedom”, this could be considered his first command.

 

Debussy is frequently identified with the impressionist artistic movement: but whereas painters like Monet gave a great importance to light, Debussy was mainly interested by the quality and effect of sound. Comments of Debussy about Stravinsky were that “he was widening the borders of the allowed in the empire of sound”, and this could undoubtedly be referred to in his own work.

PERFORMED on APRIL 28, 2007

BAVARIAN STATE BALLET

Munich
MULTIPLICITY

MULTIPLICITY, FORMS OF SILENCE AND EMPTINESS

World premiere at Viehauktionshalle ( Weimar-Germany), 23 April, 1999.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Johan Sebastian Bach (collage)
Sets: Jaffar Al Chalabi (based on an original idea of Nacho Duato)
Costumes: Nacho Duato (in collaboration with Ismael Aznar)
Light Design: Brad Fields

MULTIPLICITY is the result of the coproduction between the city of Weimar -European Cultural Capital in 1999-  and the CND. A ballet was commissioned to Nacho Duato which somehow had some special link with the city. For Duato the answer could only be one: Bach.  Nacho’s ballet is therefore inspired in the music and life of  Johan Sebastian Bach and is divided into two parts.

The first one, Multiplicity, is a choreographic reflexion which arises mainly from the wonderful music of the brilliant composer. This first part is characterized by a choreographic variety and diversity which matches the linked different musical excerpts by Bach. Continuos changes in costumes and settings highlight visually this musical collage.

The second part, Forms of silence and emptiness, maintains a more introspective tone, more mystic and spiritual, reflecting upon the subject of the death, so present in the work of Bach. Musically speaking it is based mainly on the Arte of Fugue.

PERFORMED on DECEMBER 23, 2009
NA FLORESTA

NA FLORESTA

World premiere 15 February 1990, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Heitor Villalobos ( Wagner Tisso)
Costumes: Nacho Duato
Scenery: Walter Nobbe
Lighting. Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on OCTOBER 25, 2011
JARDI TANCAT

JARDI TANCAT

World premiere 19 December 1983, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: María del Mar Bonet
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on APRIL 28, 2013

NURENBERGS STAATS BALLET

DUENDE

DUENDE

World premiere 21 November 1991, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague.
PREMIERE BY COMPAÑÍA NACIONAL DE DANZA AT THE TEATRO LÍRICO NACIONAL LA ZARZUELA, 11 DECEMBER, 1992

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Claude Debussy
Scenery: Walter Nobbe
Costumes: Susan Unger
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

Duato’s ‘ideas’ for a choreography are almost always preceded by his choice in music, which characterises his working method. Maybe this applies to Duende in particular, because the music was the only source of inspiration for this ballet. Long ago Duato fell in love with Debussy, especially by the way the composer makes nature sound in music. When he listens to this music, Duato visualises shapes, not people, relationships or events. This is why he considers Duende as an almost sculptural work: a body, a movement, that goes with the tune.

 

Duende literally means elfs and fairies, like the ones who tidy up children’s toys at night, but it can also mean rascal, a naughty child. One can also possess duende, when radiating energy and great charm, almost having a magical attraction. In Andalusia it is said flamenco has duende, which can hardly be translated into another language. Flamenco has a touch of spell, one might say, like the way black music has ‘soul’.

 

At the beginning of twentieth century Debussy was an unknown composer, and the public was suddenly listening to absolutely different sounds .Strange, beautiful and magical, as they must have been, these sounds have identified his complex cultural roots. Debussy’s music reveals classic and romantic origins apart from connections with lay music, the folk songs, Arab, eastern and slave cultures, and even with jazz.

 

Classicism may simply be explained as consecrated to form. In this sense, Romanticism is usually defined as the expression of emotions. However, the relationship between Debussy and these two concepts is not always as simple. Form and emotion are always present in his music, but more as the result of a process of insinuation than one of definition. In one of his rules for composers, Debussy wrote: “Discipline must be looked for in freedom”, this could be considered his first command.

 

Debussy is frequently identified with the impressionist artistic movement: but whereas painters like Monet gave a great importance to light, Debussy was mainly interested by the quality and effect of sound. Comments of Debussy about Stravinsky were that “he was widening the borders of the allowed in the empire of sound”, and this could undoubtedly be referred to in his own work.

PERFORMED on JUNE 18, 2011
POR VOS MUERO

POR VOS MUERO

World premiere 11 April  1996, Compañía Nacional de Danza, teatro de Madrid.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Jordi Savall
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel
Texto Garcilaso de la Vega
Voz: Miguel Bosé

Duato has inspired in old Spanish music of XV and XVI centuries together with some of the most beautiful verses of the Spanish poet Garcilaso de la Vega. Music and poetry connect the obvious contemporary dance of Por Vos Muero to his historic reference.

In XV and XVI centuries dances formed part of the cultural expression of people, including all social hierarchies, and therefore they produced a honest reflection of culture of that time. Por Vos Muero wants to pay a tribute to the very important role that dance played in every sort of social event during those ancient times.

PERFORMED on APRIL 26, 2014

STUTTGART BALLET

Coming togheter

COMING TOGETHER

World premiere by Compañía Nacional de Danza at Teatro de la Zarzuela, Madrid, 23 December 1991.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Frederic Rzewski(Coming Together)
Sets and Costumes: Nacho Duato
Light Design: Nicolás Fischtel


The turbulent repetition of musical structures and recited text from the Frederic Rzewski’s frantic composition provides with the accompaniment and counterpoint to an abstract work by Nacho Duato who uses his effervescence both to bring us closer to furious frenzy and hysterics, and as a contrast in his creation of oniric atmospheres. Both phenomenons appear alternatively as well as simultaneously as it could happen with the rhythms and sensations which develop within a big city.

 

The result, of an obvious comtemporary style, forces the spectator to focus his attention on the multiple changes of the choreographic process as well as on the system and structure of steps, instead of the ordinary descriptive and narrative elements.

 

Frederic Rzewski’s piece entitled Coming Together and Attica written for narrator and instruments, to be performed ad libitum in two parts, is of crucial importance in the history of repetitive music and not only because of its obvious influence on later pieces. Here the repetitive techniques and structuring are not an end in themselves but the means of creating a coherent musical, dramatic world. While this piece just like Rzewski’s other works makes use of improvisation and repetition it is also a committed work both in the social and the political sense. Rzewski managed to combine the political, ideological meaning of the text and the musical structure into a homogeneous whole by means of an original “minimal” idea.

 

The eight sentences from a letter by Sam Melville (a political prisoner killed in the 1971 Attica prison riots) are first narrated in an additive then in a deductive progression. The title of the piece is a reference to a sentence of the letter and to the technique of musical improvisation.

PERFORMED on –
RASSEMBLEMENT

RASSEMBLEMENT

World premiere 27 February 1990, The Cullberg Ballet ( Stockholm), Hjalmar Bergman theatre ( Örebro)

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Toto Bissainthe
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on MAY 11, 1996

PALUCCA SCHULE

 Dresden
NA FLORESTA

NA FLORESTA

World premiere 15 February 1990, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Heitor Villalobos ( Wagner Tisso)
Costumes: Nacho Duato
Scenery: Walter Nobbe
Lighting. Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on JUNE 28, 2009

HONG KONG

THE HONG KONG BALLET

CASTRATI

CASTRATI

Contrary to popular belief, Lorem Ipsum is not simply random text. It has roots in a piece of classical Latin literature from 45 BC, making it over 2000 years old. Richard McClintock, a Latin professor at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, looked up one of the more obscure Latin words, consectetur, from a Lorem Ipsum passage, and going through the cites of the word in classical literature, discovered the undoubtable source.

PERFORMED on NOVEMBER 2, 2012

ISRAEL

KAMEA DANCE CO

Beer-Sheva
GNAWA

GNAWA

World premiere 9 September 1993, Hubbard Street Dance Street ( Chicago-USA)
Premiere performance by the Hubbard Street Dance Chicago at the Joan W. and Irving B. Harris Theater for Music and Dance, March 2005
Premiered by the Compañía Nacional de Danza 2 at the Teatro Gran Vía, Madrid, the 18th of April 2007

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: collage
Costumes: Luis Devota y Modesto Lomba
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

In 1992 in his home city of Valencia, Nacho Duato premiered Mediterrania, searching deeper into his roots and those of his forebears, and his sense of complicity with the Mediterranean Sea.

In Gnawa, premiered by the Hubbard Street Dance Chicago in 2005, the renowned choreographer has continued along the path he set out on with Mediterrania, seeking to transmit, through the medium of movement, the sensuality of the landscape, the true nature of its peoples. With a suggestive musical score replete with Spanish and North African sounds, Gnawa captivates its audience through its all-encompassing power and its sensual elegance, combining the spirituality and organic rhythm of the Mediterranean.

Gnawa is the name that receives in Morocco and other parts of the Magreb the members of different mystic Muslim brotherhoods characterized by their sub-saharian origin and the use of song, dances and syncretic rituals as a mean to reach ecstasy. This term also refers to a musical style of sub-saharian reminiscences practised by these brotherhoods or by musicians inspired by them. It is considered one of the main Moroccan Folklore genres.  

 

PERFORMED on MARCH 16, 2017

ITALY

MAGGIO MUSICALE FIORENTINO

Florence
L'AMOROSO

L’AMOROSO

World premiere by Compañía Nacional de Danza 2 at Teatro de Madrid on  May 21,  2004

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Guido Balestracci
Costumes: Nacho Duato
Scenery: Walter Nobbe
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

L’Amoroso is Nacho Duato’s first piece created expressly for the Compañía Nacional de Danza 2.
The choreographer uses a selection of concerts of viola da gamba from the Italian baroque. The soft, artful music and the freshness and youth of the dancers inspire Duato to create a dynamic and vital atmosphere on stage.

PERFORMED on FEBRUARY 15, 2006
COR PERDUT

COR PERDUT

First performed by the Nederlands Dans Theater 2 in The Hague on 27 April, 1989

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: María del Mar Bonet after M.J.Berberian
Costumes: Nacho Duato
Lighting Design: Nacho Duato

Cor Perdut is a duet inspired on the song Bir Demet Yasemen, in the catalonian version done by mallorcan singer María del Mar Bonet from the original theme by M.J. Berberian. “It is not worth to cry /it is not worth to die / since desire is much stronger / just follow its own path”, sings the wonderful voice of María del Mar Bonet, whose enchanting power dominates Duato´s piece who has created this choreography as a birthday gift to the singer. Following the syncopated and hypnotic rhythm of the tunisian percussions the dancers recreates the dynamic and expressive body vocabulary of the choreographer perfectly matching the fluidity and sensuality of the singer´s voice.

PERFORMED on FEBRUARY 15, 2006

BALLETTO TEATRO SAN CARLO DI NAPOLI

WITHOUT WORDS

WITHOUT WORDS

World premiere 29 October 1998, American Ballet Theatre, City Center Theatre (New York).

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Franz Schubert
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Brad Fields

PERFORMED on NOVEMBER 13, 2010

TEATRO NUOVO TORINO

JARDI TANCAT

JARDI TANCAT

World premiere 19 December 1983, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: María del Mar Bonet
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on MAY 22, 1996

TEATRO MASSIMO DI PALERMO

DUENDE

DUENDE

World premiere 21 November 1991, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague.
PREMIERE BY COMPAÑÍA NACIONAL DE DANZA AT THE TEATRO LÍRICO NACIONAL LA ZARZUELA, 11 DECEMBER, 1992

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Claude Debussy
Scenery: Walter Nobbe
Costumes: Susan Unger
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

Duato’s ‘ideas’ for a choreography are almost always preceded by his choice in music, which characterises his working method. Maybe this applies to Duende in particular, because the music was the only source of inspiration for this ballet. Long ago Duato fell in love with Debussy, especially by the way the composer makes nature sound in music. When he listens to this music, Duato visualises shapes, not people, relationships or events. This is why he considers Duende as an almost sculptural work: a body, a movement, that goes with the tune.

 

Duende literally means elfs and fairies, like the ones who tidy up children’s toys at night, but it can also mean rascal, a naughty child. One can also possess duende, when radiating energy and great charm, almost having a magical attraction. In Andalusia it is said flamenco has duende, which can hardly be translated into another language. Flamenco has a touch of spell, one might say, like the way black music has ‘soul’.

 

At the beginning of twentieth century Debussy was an unknown composer, and the public was suddenly listening to absolutely different sounds .Strange, beautiful and magical, as they must have been, these sounds have identified his complex cultural roots. Debussy’s music reveals classic and romantic origins apart from connections with lay music, the folk songs, Arab, eastern and slave cultures, and even with jazz.

 

Classicism may simply be explained as consecrated to form. In this sense, Romanticism is usually defined as the expression of emotions. However, the relationship between Debussy and these two concepts is not always as simple. Form and emotion are always present in his music, but more as the result of a process of insinuation than one of definition. In one of his rules for composers, Debussy wrote: “Discipline must be looked for in freedom”, this could be considered his first command.

 

Debussy is frequently identified with the impressionist artistic movement: but whereas painters like Monet gave a great importance to light, Debussy was mainly interested by the quality and effect of sound. Comments of Debussy about Stravinsky were that “he was widening the borders of the allowed in the empire of sound”, and this could undoubtedly be referred to in his own work.

PERFORMED on APRIL 28, 2018

JAPAN

ASAMI MAKI BALLET

Tokyo
Coming togheter

COMING TOGETHER

World premiere by Compañía Nacional de Danza at Teatro de la Zarzuela, Madrid, 23 December 1991.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Frederic Rzewski(Coming Together)
Sets and Costumes: Nacho Duato
Light Design: Nicolás Fischtel


The turbulent repetition of musical structures and recited text from the Frederic Rzewski’s frantic composition provides with the accompaniment and counterpoint to an abstract work by Nacho Duato who uses his effervescence both to bring us closer to furious frenzy and hysterics, and as a contrast in his creation of oniric atmospheres. Both phenomenons appear alternatively as well as simultaneously as it could happen with the rhythms and sensations which develop within a big city.

 

The result, of an obvious comtemporary style, forces the spectator to focus his attention on the multiple changes of the choreographic process as well as on the system and structure of steps, instead of the ordinary descriptive and narrative elements.

 

Frederic Rzewski’s piece entitled Coming Together and Attica written for narrator and instruments, to be performed ad libitum in two parts, is of crucial importance in the history of repetitive music and not only because of its obvious influence on later pieces. Here the repetitive techniques and structuring are not an end in themselves but the means of creating a coherent musical, dramatic world. While this piece just like Rzewski’s other works makes use of improvisation and repetition it is also a committed work both in the social and the political sense. Rzewski managed to combine the political, ideological meaning of the text and the musical structure into a homogeneous whole by means of an original “minimal” idea.

 

The eight sentences from a letter by Sam Melville (a political prisoner killed in the 1971 Attica prison riots) are first narrated in an additive then in a deductive progression. The title of the piece is a reference to a sentence of the letter and to the technique of musical improvisation.

PERFORMED on AUGUST 22, 1998

NEW NATIONAL THEATRE FOUNDATION

Tokyo
DUENDE

DUENDE

World premiere 21 November 1991, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague.
PREMIERE BY COMPAÑÍA NACIONAL DE DANZA AT THE TEATRO LÍRICO NACIONAL LA ZARZUELA, 11 DECEMBER, 1992

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Claude Debussy
Scenery: Walter Nobbe
Costumes: Susan Unger
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

Duato’s ‘ideas’ for a choreography are almost always preceded by his choice in music, which characterises his working method. Maybe this applies to Duende in particular, because the music was the only source of inspiration for this ballet. Long ago Duato fell in love with Debussy, especially by the way the composer makes nature sound in music. When he listens to this music, Duato visualises shapes, not people, relationships or events. This is why he considers Duende as an almost sculptural work: a body, a movement, that goes with the tune.

 

Duende literally means elfs and fairies, like the ones who tidy up children’s toys at night, but it can also mean rascal, a naughty child. One can also possess duende, when radiating energy and great charm, almost having a magical attraction. In Andalusia it is said flamenco has duende, which can hardly be translated into another language. Flamenco has a touch of spell, one might say, like the way black music has ‘soul’.

 

At the beginning of twentieth century Debussy was an unknown composer, and the public was suddenly listening to absolutely different sounds .Strange, beautiful and magical, as they must have been, these sounds have identified his complex cultural roots. Debussy’s music reveals classic and romantic origins apart from connections with lay music, the folk songs, Arab, eastern and slave cultures, and even with jazz.

 

Classicism may simply be explained as consecrated to form. In this sense, Romanticism is usually defined as the expression of emotions. However, the relationship between Debussy and these two concepts is not always as simple. Form and emotion are always present in his music, but more as the result of a process of insinuation than one of definition. In one of his rules for composers, Debussy wrote: “Discipline must be looked for in freedom”, this could be considered his first command.

 

Debussy is frequently identified with the impressionist artistic movement: but whereas painters like Monet gave a great importance to light, Debussy was mainly interested by the quality and effect of sound. Comments of Debussy about Stravinsky were that “he was widening the borders of the allowed in the empire of sound”, and this could undoubtedly be referred to in his own work.

PERFORMED on MARCH 17, 2002
JARDI TANCAT

JARDI TANCAT

World premiere 19 December 1983, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: María del Mar Bonet
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on OCTOBER 3, 2003
POR VOS MUERO

POR VOS MUERO

World premiere 11 April  1996, Compañía Nacional de Danza, teatro de Madrid.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Jordi Savall
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel
Texto Garcilaso de la Vega
Voz: Miguel Bosé

Duato has inspired in old Spanish music of XV and XVI centuries together with some of the most beautiful verses of the Spanish poet Garcilaso de la Vega. Music and poetry connect the obvious contemporary dance of Por Vos Muero to his historic reference.

In XV and XVI centuries dances formed part of the cultural expression of people, including all social hierarchies, and therefore they produced a honest reflection of culture of that time. Por Vos Muero wants to pay a tribute to the very important role that dance played in every sort of social event during those ancient times.

PERFORMED on MARCH 23, 2006

STAR DANCERS BALLET FOUNDATION

Tokyo
NA FLORESTA

NA FLORESTA

World premiere 15 February 1990, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Heitor Villalobos ( Wagner Tisso)
Costumes: Nacho Duato
Scenery: Walter Nobbe
Lighting. Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on NOVEMBER 23, 2001

MONACO

LES BALLETS DE MONTECARLO

DUENDE

DUENDE

World premiere 21 November 1991, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague.
PREMIERE BY COMPAÑÍA NACIONAL DE DANZA AT THE TEATRO LÍRICO NACIONAL LA ZARZUELA, 11 DECEMBER, 1992

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Claude Debussy
Scenery: Walter Nobbe
Costumes: Susan Unger
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

Duato’s ‘ideas’ for a choreography are almost always preceded by his choice in music, which characterises his working method. Maybe this applies to Duende in particular, because the music was the only source of inspiration for this ballet. Long ago Duato fell in love with Debussy, especially by the way the composer makes nature sound in music. When he listens to this music, Duato visualises shapes, not people, relationships or events. This is why he considers Duende as an almost sculptural work: a body, a movement, that goes with the tune.

 

Duende literally means elfs and fairies, like the ones who tidy up children’s toys at night, but it can also mean rascal, a naughty child. One can also possess duende, when radiating energy and great charm, almost having a magical attraction. In Andalusia it is said flamenco has duende, which can hardly be translated into another language. Flamenco has a touch of spell, one might say, like the way black music has ‘soul’.

 

At the beginning of twentieth century Debussy was an unknown composer, and the public was suddenly listening to absolutely different sounds .Strange, beautiful and magical, as they must have been, these sounds have identified his complex cultural roots. Debussy’s music reveals classic and romantic origins apart from connections with lay music, the folk songs, Arab, eastern and slave cultures, and even with jazz.

 

Classicism may simply be explained as consecrated to form. In this sense, Romanticism is usually defined as the expression of emotions. However, the relationship between Debussy and these two concepts is not always as simple. Form and emotion are always present in his music, but more as the result of a process of insinuation than one of definition. In one of his rules for composers, Debussy wrote: “Discipline must be looked for in freedom”, this could be considered his first command.

 

Debussy is frequently identified with the impressionist artistic movement: but whereas painters like Monet gave a great importance to light, Debussy was mainly interested by the quality and effect of sound. Comments of Debussy about Stravinsky were that “he was widening the borders of the allowed in the empire of sound”, and this could undoubtedly be referred to in his own work.

PERFORMED on DECEMBER 21, 1995
NA FLORESTA

NA FLORESTA

World premiere 15 February 1990, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Heitor Villalobos ( Wagner Tisso)
Costumes: Nacho Duato
Scenery: Walter Nobbe
Lighting. Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on JANUARY 2, 1998
WHITE DARKNESS

WHITE DARKNESS

World premiere 16 November 2001, Compañía Nacional de Danza, Teatro de la Zarzuela de Madrid.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Karl Jenkins
Costumes: Lourdes Frías
Scenery: Jaafar Chalabi
Lighting: Joop Caboort

PERFORMED on JULY 26, 2018

NEW ZEALAND

NEW ZEALAND SCHOOL OF DANCE

Wellington
JARDI TANCAT

JARDI TANCAT

World premiere 19 December 1983, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: María del Mar Bonet
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on NOVEMBER 5, 2003

NORWAY

NORWEGIAN NATIONAL BALLET

Oslo
MULTIPLICITY

MULTIPLICITY, FORMS OF SILENCE AND EMPTINESS

World premiere at Viehauktionshalle ( Weimar-Germany), 23 April, 1999.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Johan Sebastian Bach (collage)
Sets: Jaffar Al Chalabi (based on an original idea of Nacho Duato)
Costumes: Nacho Duato (in collaboration with Ismael Aznar)
Light Design: Brad Fields

MULTIPLICITY is the result of the coproduction between the city of Weimar -European Cultural Capital in 1999-  and the CND. A ballet was commissioned to Nacho Duato which somehow had some special link with the city. For Duato the answer could only be one: Bach.  Nacho’s ballet is therefore inspired in the music and life of  Johan Sebastian Bach and is divided into two parts.

The first one, Multiplicity, is a choreographic reflexion which arises mainly from the wonderful music of the brilliant composer. This first part is characterized by a choreographic variety and diversity which matches the linked different musical excerpts by Bach. Continuos changes in costumes and settings highlight visually this musical collage.

The second part, Forms of silence and emptiness, maintains a more introspective tone, more mystic and spiritual, reflecting upon the subject of the death, so present in the work of Bach. Musically speaking it is based mainly on the Arte of Fugue.

PERFORMED on SEPTEMBER 23, 2012
POR VOS MUERO

POR VOS MUERO

World premiere 11 April  1996, Compañía Nacional de Danza, teatro de Madrid.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Jordi Savall
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel
Texto Garcilaso de la Vega
Voz: Miguel Bosé

Duato has inspired in old Spanish music of XV and XVI centuries together with some of the most beautiful verses of the Spanish poet Garcilaso de la Vega. Music and poetry connect the obvious contemporary dance of Por Vos Muero to his historic reference.

In XV and XVI centuries dances formed part of the cultural expression of people, including all social hierarchies, and therefore they produced a honest reflection of culture of that time. Por Vos Muero wants to pay a tribute to the very important role that dance played in every sort of social event during those ancient times.

PERFORMED on MARCH 29, 2003
ARCANGELO

ARCANGELO

World Premiere by Compañía Nacional de Danza at Teatro Real de Madrid, 31 May, 2000

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Arcangelo Corelli (Concerti Grossi Op. 6), Domenico Scarlatti (Il primo omicidio)
Light: Brad Fields
Costumes : Nacho Duato in collaboration with Ismael Aznar
Scenery: Nacho Duato
Length Of Performance: 32 min

PERFORMED on OCTOBER 31, 2009
WHITE DARKNESS

WHITE DARKNESS

World premiere 16 November 2001, Compañía Nacional de Danza, Teatro de la Zarzuela de Madrid.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Karl Jenkins
Costumes: Lourdes Frías
Scenery: Jaafar Chalabi
Lighting: Joop Caboort

PERFORMED on SEPTEMBER 26, 2006
WITHOUT WORDS

WITHOUT WORDS

World premiere 29 October 1998, American Ballet Theatre, City Center Theatre (New York).

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Franz Schubert
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Brad Fields

PERFORMED on MAY 9, 2015

PORTUGAL

COMPANHIA NACIONAL DE BAILADO

LISBON
POR VOS MUERO

POR VOS MUERO

World premiere 11 April  1996, Compañía Nacional de Danza, teatro de Madrid.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Jordi Savall
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel
Texto Garcilaso de la Vega
Voz: Miguel Bosé

Duato has inspired in old Spanish music of XV and XVI centuries together with some of the most beautiful verses of the Spanish poet Garcilaso de la Vega. Music and poetry connect the obvious contemporary dance of Por Vos Muero to his historic reference.

In XV and XVI centuries dances formed part of the cultural expression of people, including all social hierarchies, and therefore they produced a honest reflection of culture of that time. Por Vos Muero wants to pay a tribute to the very important role that dance played in every sort of social event during those ancient times.

PERFORMED on MARCH 17, 2006
WITHOUT WORDS

WITHOUT WORDS

World premiere 29 October 1998, American Ballet Theatre, City Center Theatre (New York).

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Franz Schubert
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Brad Fields

PERFORMED on MARCH 26, 2004

BALLET GULBENKIAN

LISBON
JARDI TANCAT

JARDI TANCAT

World premiere 19 December 1983, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: María del Mar Bonet
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on
RASSEMBLEMENT

RASSEMBLEMENT

World premiere 27 February 1990, The Cullberg Ballet ( Stockholm), Hjalmar Bergman theatre ( Örebro)

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Toto Bissainthe
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on JANUARY 22, 1997

PUERTO RICO

CoDa21 DANCE COMPANY

SAN JUAN
RASSEMBLEMENT

RASSEMBLEMENT

World premiere 27 February 1990, The Cullberg Ballet ( Stockholm), Hjalmar Bergman theatre ( Örebro)

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Toto Bissainthe
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on MARCH 6, 2015

RUSSIA

BOLSHOI BALLET

MOSCOW
COR PERDUT

COR PERDUT

First performed by the Nederlands Dans Theater 2 in The Hague on 27 April, 1989

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: María del Mar Bonet after M.J.Berberian
Costumes: Nacho Duato
Lighting Design: Nacho Duato

Cor Perdut is a duet inspired on the song Bir Demet Yasemen, in the catalonian version done by mallorcan singer María del Mar Bonet from the original theme by M.J. Berberian. “It is not worth to cry /it is not worth to die / since desire is much stronger / just follow its own path”, sings the wonderful voice of María del Mar Bonet, whose enchanting power dominates Duato´s piece who has created this choreography as a birthday gift to the singer. Following the syncopated and hypnotic rhythm of the tunisian percussions the dancers recreates the dynamic and expressive body vocabulary of the choreographer perfectly matching the fluidity and sensuality of the singer´s voice.

PERFORMED on MAY 20, 2010
REMANSO

REMANSO

World premiere 5 November 1997, American Ballet Theatre ( New York), The City Center Theatre.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Enrique Granados
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Brad Fields

First presented by American Ballet Theater, at City Center of New York on 5 November, 1997 and by Compañía Nacional de Danza of Spain at Teatro de Madrid, on 5 June, 1998.

Remanso, based on Poetic Watzes by Enrique Granados, has got major reception by audience and especialized critics.

Expresive power, geometry of lines, dinamics of space and forms, were some of the remarks about Duato´s work. From that very first version, Duato has extended the ballet for Compañía Nacional de Danza, transforming it into REMANSOS. Based on the music of Enrique Granados and inspired in the universe of Federico García Lorca Remansos, full of inventiviness, offers the observer a constant wink based on the perspicacity of movement.

PERFORMED on NOVEMBER 11, 2009

STANISLAWSKY BALLET

MOSCOW
NA FLORESTA

NA FLORESTA

World premiere 15 February 1990, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Heitor Villalobos ( Wagner Tisso)
Costumes: Nacho Duato
Scenery: Walter Nobbe
Lighting. Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on JULY 24, 2009
POR VOS MUERO

POR VOS MUERO

World premiere 11 April  1996, Compañía Nacional de Danza, teatro de Madrid.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Jordi Savall
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel
Texto Garcilaso de la Vega
Voz: Miguel Bosé

Duato has inspired in old Spanish music of XV and XVI centuries together with some of the most beautiful verses of the Spanish poet Garcilaso de la Vega. Music and poetry connect the obvious contemporary dance of Por Vos Muero to his historic reference.

In XV and XVI centuries dances formed part of the cultural expression of people, including all social hierarchies, and therefore they produced a honest reflection of culture of that time. Por Vos Muero wants to pay a tribute to the very important role that dance played in every sort of social event during those ancient times.

PERFORMED on MAY 28, 2011

SINGAPORE

SINGAPORE BALLET

JARDI TANCAT

JARDI TANCAT

World premiere 19 December 1983, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: María del Mar Bonet
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on SEPTEMBER 26, 2001

SLOVAKIAN REPUBLIC

SLOVAKIAN NATIONAL BALLET

BRATISLAVA
DUENDE

DUENDE

World premiere 21 November 1991, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague.
PREMIERE BY COMPAÑÍA NACIONAL DE DANZA AT THE TEATRO LÍRICO NACIONAL LA ZARZUELA, 11 DECEMBER, 1992

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Claude Debussy
Scenery: Walter Nobbe
Costumes: Susan Unger
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

Duato’s ‘ideas’ for a choreography are almost always preceded by his choice in music, which characterises his working method. Maybe this applies to Duende in particular, because the music was the only source of inspiration for this ballet. Long ago Duato fell in love with Debussy, especially by the way the composer makes nature sound in music. When he listens to this music, Duato visualises shapes, not people, relationships or events. This is why he considers Duende as an almost sculptural work: a body, a movement, that goes with the tune.

 

Duende literally means elfs and fairies, like the ones who tidy up children’s toys at night, but it can also mean rascal, a naughty child. One can also possess duende, when radiating energy and great charm, almost having a magical attraction. In Andalusia it is said flamenco has duende, which can hardly be translated into another language. Flamenco has a touch of spell, one might say, like the way black music has ‘soul’.

 

At the beginning of twentieth century Debussy was an unknown composer, and the public was suddenly listening to absolutely different sounds .Strange, beautiful and magical, as they must have been, these sounds have identified his complex cultural roots. Debussy’s music reveals classic and romantic origins apart from connections with lay music, the folk songs, Arab, eastern and slave cultures, and even with jazz.

 

Classicism may simply be explained as consecrated to form. In this sense, Romanticism is usually defined as the expression of emotions. However, the relationship between Debussy and these two concepts is not always as simple. Form and emotion are always present in his music, but more as the result of a process of insinuation than one of definition. In one of his rules for composers, Debussy wrote: “Discipline must be looked for in freedom”, this could be considered his first command.

 

Debussy is frequently identified with the impressionist artistic movement: but whereas painters like Monet gave a great importance to light, Debussy was mainly interested by the quality and effect of sound. Comments of Debussy about Stravinsky were that “he was widening the borders of the allowed in the empire of sound”, and this could undoubtedly be referred to in his own work.

PERFORMED on MARCH 3, 2012

SOUTH KOREA

UNIVERSAL BALLET

SEOUL
NA FLORESTA

NA FLORESTA

World premiere 15 February 1990, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Heitor Villalobos ( Wagner Tisso)
Costumes: Nacho Duato
Scenery: Walter Nobbe
Lighting. Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on AUGUST 28, 2003
DUENDE

DUENDE

World premiere 21 November 1991, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague.
PREMIERE BY COMPAÑÍA NACIONAL DE DANZA AT THE TEATRO LÍRICO NACIONAL LA ZARZUELA, 11 DECEMBER, 1992

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Claude Debussy
Scenery: Walter Nobbe
Costumes: Susan Unger
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

Duato’s ‘ideas’ for a choreography are almost always preceded by his choice in music, which characterises his working method. Maybe this applies to Duende in particular, because the music was the only source of inspiration for this ballet. Long ago Duato fell in love with Debussy, especially by the way the composer makes nature sound in music. When he listens to this music, Duato visualises shapes, not people, relationships or events. This is why he considers Duende as an almost sculptural work: a body, a movement, that goes with the tune.

 

Duende literally means elfs and fairies, like the ones who tidy up children’s toys at night, but it can also mean rascal, a naughty child. One can also possess duende, when radiating energy and great charm, almost having a magical attraction. In Andalusia it is said flamenco has duende, which can hardly be translated into another language. Flamenco has a touch of spell, one might say, like the way black music has ‘soul’.

 

At the beginning of twentieth century Debussy was an unknown composer, and the public was suddenly listening to absolutely different sounds .Strange, beautiful and magical, as they must have been, these sounds have identified his complex cultural roots. Debussy’s music reveals classic and romantic origins apart from connections with lay music, the folk songs, Arab, eastern and slave cultures, and even with jazz.

 

Classicism may simply be explained as consecrated to form. In this sense, Romanticism is usually defined as the expression of emotions. However, the relationship between Debussy and these two concepts is not always as simple. Form and emotion are always present in his music, but more as the result of a process of insinuation than one of definition. In one of his rules for composers, Debussy wrote: “Discipline must be looked for in freedom”, this could be considered his first command.

 

Debussy is frequently identified with the impressionist artistic movement: but whereas painters like Monet gave a great importance to light, Debussy was mainly interested by the quality and effect of sound. Comments of Debussy about Stravinsky were that “he was widening the borders of the allowed in the empire of sound”, and this could undoubtedly be referred to in his own work.

PERFORMED on JUNE 30, 2005
MULTIPLICITY

MULTIPLICITY, FORMS OF SILENCE AND EMPTINESS

World premiere at Viehauktionshalle ( Weimar-Germany), 23 April, 1999.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Johan Sebastian Bach (collage)
Sets: Jaffar Al Chalabi (based on an original idea of Nacho Duato)
Costumes: Nacho Duato (in collaboration with Ismael Aznar)
Light Design: Brad Fields

MULTIPLICITY is the result of the coproduction between the city of Weimar -European Cultural Capital in 1999-  and the CND. A ballet was commissioned to Nacho Duato which somehow had some special link with the city. For Duato the answer could only be one: Bach.  Nacho’s ballet is therefore inspired in the music and life of  Johan Sebastian Bach and is divided into two parts.

The first one, Multiplicity, is a choreographic reflexion which arises mainly from the wonderful music of the brilliant composer. This first part is characterized by a choreographic variety and diversity which matches the linked different musical excerpts by Bach. Continuos changes in costumes and settings highlight visually this musical collage.

The second part, Forms of silence and emptiness, maintains a more introspective tone, more mystic and spiritual, reflecting upon the subject of the death, so present in the work of Bach. Musically speaking it is based mainly on the Arte of Fugue.

PERFORMED on APRIL 24, 2014

SPAIN

Centro Coreográfico Galego

Santiago de Compostela
JARDI TANCAT

JARDI TANCAT

World premiere 19 December 1983, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: María del Mar Bonet
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on FEBRUARY 13, 2012

MADRID EN DANZA

Madrid
GALA DUATO

GALA DUATO

Gala en homenaje a Nacho Duato.

 

 

PERFORMED on NOVEMBER 18, 2016

BALLET DE ZARAGOZA

ZARAGOZA
JARDI TANCAT

JARDI TANCAT

World premiere 19 December 1983, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: María del Mar Bonet
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on 1998

IT DANSA

BARCELONA
JARDI TANCAT

JARDI TANCAT

World premiere 19 December 1983, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: María del Mar Bonet
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on 2003
COR PERDUT

COR PERDUT

First performed by the Nederlands Dans Theater 2 in The Hague on 27 April, 1989

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: María del Mar Bonet after M.J.Berberian
Costumes: Nacho Duato
Lighting Design: Nacho Duato

Cor Perdut is a duet inspired on the song Bir Demet Yasemen, in the catalonian version done by mallorcan singer María del Mar Bonet from the original theme by M.J. Berberian. “It is not worth to cry /it is not worth to die / since desire is much stronger / just follow its own path”, sings the wonderful voice of María del Mar Bonet, whose enchanting power dominates Duato´s piece who has created this choreography as a birthday gift to the singer. Following the syncopated and hypnotic rhythm of the tunisian percussions the dancers recreates the dynamic and expressive body vocabulary of the choreographer perfectly matching the fluidity and sensuality of the singer´s voice.

PERFORMED on 2003

ELEPHANT IN THE BLACK BOX

REMANSO

REMANSO

World premiere 5 November 1997, American Ballet Theatre ( New York), The City Center Theatre.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Enrique Granados
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Brad Fields

First presented by American Ballet Theater, at City Center of New York on 5 November, 1997 and by Compañía Nacional de Danza of Spain at Teatro de Madrid, on 5 June, 1998.

Remanso, based on Poetic Watzes by Enrique Granados, has got major reception by audience and especialized critics.

Expresive power, geometry of lines, dinamics of space and forms, were some of the remarks about Duato´s work. From that very first version, Duato has extended the ballet for Compañía Nacional de Danza, transforming it into REMANSOS. Based on the music of Enrique Granados and inspired in the universe of Federico García Lorca Remansos, full of inventiviness, offers the observer a constant wink based on the perspicacity of movement.

PERFORMED on NOVEMBER 8, 2013

BALLET DE LA GENERALITAT VALENCIANA

VALENCIA
Coming togheter

COMING TOGETHER

World premiere by Compañía Nacional de Danza at Teatro de la Zarzuela, Madrid, 23 December 1991.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Frederic Rzewski(Coming Together)
Sets and Costumes: Nacho Duato
Light Design: Nicolás Fischtel


The turbulent repetition of musical structures and recited text from the Frederic Rzewski’s frantic composition provides with the accompaniment and counterpoint to an abstract work by Nacho Duato who uses his effervescence both to bring us closer to furious frenzy and hysterics, and as a contrast in his creation of oniric atmospheres. Both phenomenons appear alternatively as well as simultaneously as it could happen with the rhythms and sensations which develop within a big city.

 

The result, of an obvious comtemporary style, forces the spectator to focus his attention on the multiple changes of the choreographic process as well as on the system and structure of steps, instead of the ordinary descriptive and narrative elements.

 

Frederic Rzewski’s piece entitled Coming Together and Attica written for narrator and instruments, to be performed ad libitum in two parts, is of crucial importance in the history of repetitive music and not only because of its obvious influence on later pieces. Here the repetitive techniques and structuring are not an end in themselves but the means of creating a coherent musical, dramatic world. While this piece just like Rzewski’s other works makes use of improvisation and repetition it is also a committed work both in the social and the political sense. Rzewski managed to combine the political, ideological meaning of the text and the musical structure into a homogeneous whole by means of an original “minimal” idea.

 

The eight sentences from a letter by Sam Melville (a political prisoner killed in the 1971 Attica prison riots) are first narrated in an additive then in a deductive progression. The title of the piece is a reference to a sentence of the letter and to the technique of musical improvisation.

PERFORMED on
JARDI TANCAT

JARDI TANCAT

World premiere 19 December 1983, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: María del Mar Bonet
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on APRIL 20, 2007
SUEÑOS DE ÉTER

DREAMS OF ETHER

Estrenado por la Nederlands Dans Theater en el Lucent Dans Theater de la Haya el 11 de septiembre de 1986. Estrenado por la Compañía Nacional de Danza en el Palacio de Festivales de Cantabria de Santander el 5 de abril de 2002.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Marcel Landowski
Costumes: Lourdes Frías
Scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Brad Fields

Sueños de Éter fue originalmente creado por el Director Artístico de La Compañía Nacional de Danza para el prestigioso Nederlands Dans Theater. El ballet nos sitúa en un mundo onírico, donde ocho mujeres danzan sus sueños/pesadillas en una atmósfera cargada de opresión y sufrimiento. La música de Landowski evoca un mundo donde todo se traduce en un discurso metafísico a través del cual la vida se entiende a través de los sonidos. La alegría, la meditación, la pena, la frustración, el deseo, todos las emociones que desarrollan las ocho intérpretes de este ballet tienen de algún modo su origen en el Concierto para ondas Martenot para percusión y orquesta de cuerdas del maravilloso compositor francés. El vestuario que lleva a cabo Lourdes Frías y el diseño de luces firmado por Brad Fields suponen para este estreno por la Compañía Nacional de Danza una realización de lujo.

PERFORMED on NOVEMBER 2, 2005

SWEDEN

ROYAL SWEDISH BALLET

Stockholm
CASTRATI

CASTRATI

Contrary to popular belief, Lorem Ipsum is not simply random text. It has roots in a piece of classical Latin literature from 45 BC, making it over 2000 years old. Richard McClintock, a Latin professor at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, looked up one of the more obscure Latin words, consectetur, from a Lorem Ipsum passage, and going through the cites of the word in classical literature, discovered the undoubtable source.

PERFORMED on NOVEMBER 9, 2007
POR VOS MUERO

POR VOS MUERO

World premiere 11 April  1996, Compañía Nacional de Danza, teatro de Madrid.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Jordi Savall
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel
Texto Garcilaso de la Vega
Voz: Miguel Bosé

Duato has inspired in old Spanish music of XV and XVI centuries together with some of the most beautiful verses of the Spanish poet Garcilaso de la Vega. Music and poetry connect the obvious contemporary dance of Por Vos Muero to his historic reference.

In XV and XVI centuries dances formed part of the cultural expression of people, including all social hierarchies, and therefore they produced a honest reflection of culture of that time. Por Vos Muero wants to pay a tribute to the very important role that dance played in every sort of social event during those ancient times.

PERFORMED on NOVEMBER 4, 2005
NA FLORESTA

NA FLORESTA

World premiere 15 February 1990, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Heitor Villalobos ( Wagner Tisso)
Costumes: Nacho Duato
Scenery: Walter Nobbe
Lighting. Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on APRIL 4, 2003

GOTHEMBURG BALLET

DUENDE

DUENDE

World premiere 21 November 1991, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague.
PREMIERE BY COMPAÑÍA NACIONAL DE DANZA AT THE TEATRO LÍRICO NACIONAL LA ZARZUELA, 11 DECEMBER, 1992

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Claude Debussy
Scenery: Walter Nobbe
Costumes: Susan Unger
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

Duato’s ‘ideas’ for a choreography are almost always preceded by his choice in music, which characterises his working method. Maybe this applies to Duende in particular, because the music was the only source of inspiration for this ballet. Long ago Duato fell in love with Debussy, especially by the way the composer makes nature sound in music. When he listens to this music, Duato visualises shapes, not people, relationships or events. This is why he considers Duende as an almost sculptural work: a body, a movement, that goes with the tune.

 

Duende literally means elfs and fairies, like the ones who tidy up children’s toys at night, but it can also mean rascal, a naughty child. One can also possess duende, when radiating energy and great charm, almost having a magical attraction. In Andalusia it is said flamenco has duende, which can hardly be translated into another language. Flamenco has a touch of spell, one might say, like the way black music has ‘soul’.

 

At the beginning of twentieth century Debussy was an unknown composer, and the public was suddenly listening to absolutely different sounds .Strange, beautiful and magical, as they must have been, these sounds have identified his complex cultural roots. Debussy’s music reveals classic and romantic origins apart from connections with lay music, the folk songs, Arab, eastern and slave cultures, and even with jazz.

 

Classicism may simply be explained as consecrated to form. In this sense, Romanticism is usually defined as the expression of emotions. However, the relationship between Debussy and these two concepts is not always as simple. Form and emotion are always present in his music, but more as the result of a process of insinuation than one of definition. In one of his rules for composers, Debussy wrote: “Discipline must be looked for in freedom”, this could be considered his first command.

 

Debussy is frequently identified with the impressionist artistic movement: but whereas painters like Monet gave a great importance to light, Debussy was mainly interested by the quality and effect of sound. Comments of Debussy about Stravinsky were that “he was widening the borders of the allowed in the empire of sound”, and this could undoubtedly be referred to in his own work.

PERFORMED on MAY 19, 2000
ARCANGELO

ARCANGELO

World Premiere by Compañía Nacional de Danza at Teatro Real de Madrid, 31 May, 2000

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Arcangelo Corelli (Concerti Grossi Op. 6), Domenico Scarlatti (Il primo omicidio)
Light: Brad Fields
Costumes : Nacho Duato in collaboration with Ismael Aznar
Scenery: Nacho Duato
Length Of Performance: 32 min

PERFORMED on FEBRUARY 28, 2004
JARDI TANCAT

JARDI TANCAT

World premiere 19 December 1983, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: María del Mar Bonet
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on MAY 2, 2003
RAPTUS

RAPTUS

Premiered by the Nederlands Dans Theater at AT&T Danstheater, Den Haag, October 20th, 1988. Premiered by Compañía Nacional de Danza at Teatro de la Zarzuela de Madrid, November 22nd, 1996.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Richard Wagner Wesendonklieder
Sets: Walter Nobbe
Costumes: Nacho Duato
Light Design: Joop Caboort
Scenery: Walter Nobbe

Raptus, whose main characteristic lies in its passionate movements, is based on the romantic and emotive songs contained in Richard Wagner’s Wesendonklieder. These songs were inspired by the very intense, albeit hopeless, relationship between Wagner and Mary Wesendonk which was destined to be broken off. Even though the choreographer does not portray their conflict directly, the images and atmosphere created convey, without doubt, an evocative emotion. Walter Nobbe’s stage design plays and important role here. It consists of two large , thick moveable panels, one of whose sides is covered with reflecting material, and the other with images of the shoulders and head of a man and a woman.

The overall impression of Raptus is overwhelming, with uncontrolled passions leading to destruction. It is a ballet endowed with enormous intensity, in terms of movement, emotion and staging.

PERFORMED on SEPTEMBER 18, 2004
WHITE DARKNESS

WHITE DARKNESS

World premiere 16 November 2001, Compañía Nacional de Danza, Teatro de la Zarzuela de Madrid.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Karl Jenkins
Costumes: Lourdes Frías
Scenery: Jaafar Chalabi
Lighting: Joop Caboort

PERFORMED on FEBRUARY 27, 2006

SWITZERLAND

BASLER BALLET

Basel
DUENDE

DUENDE

World premiere 21 November 1991, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague.
PREMIERE BY COMPAÑÍA NACIONAL DE DANZA AT THE TEATRO LÍRICO NACIONAL LA ZARZUELA, 11 DECEMBER, 1992

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Claude Debussy
Scenery: Walter Nobbe
Costumes: Susan Unger
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

Duato’s ‘ideas’ for a choreography are almost always preceded by his choice in music, which characterises his working method. Maybe this applies to Duende in particular, because the music was the only source of inspiration for this ballet. Long ago Duato fell in love with Debussy, especially by the way the composer makes nature sound in music. When he listens to this music, Duato visualises shapes, not people, relationships or events. This is why he considers Duende as an almost sculptural work: a body, a movement, that goes with the tune.

 

Duende literally means elfs and fairies, like the ones who tidy up children’s toys at night, but it can also mean rascal, a naughty child. One can also possess duende, when radiating energy and great charm, almost having a magical attraction. In Andalusia it is said flamenco has duende, which can hardly be translated into another language. Flamenco has a touch of spell, one might say, like the way black music has ‘soul’.

 

At the beginning of twentieth century Debussy was an unknown composer, and the public was suddenly listening to absolutely different sounds .Strange, beautiful and magical, as they must have been, these sounds have identified his complex cultural roots. Debussy’s music reveals classic and romantic origins apart from connections with lay music, the folk songs, Arab, eastern and slave cultures, and even with jazz.

 

Classicism may simply be explained as consecrated to form. In this sense, Romanticism is usually defined as the expression of emotions. However, the relationship between Debussy and these two concepts is not always as simple. Form and emotion are always present in his music, but more as the result of a process of insinuation than one of definition. In one of his rules for composers, Debussy wrote: “Discipline must be looked for in freedom”, this could be considered his first command.

 

Debussy is frequently identified with the impressionist artistic movement: but whereas painters like Monet gave a great importance to light, Debussy was mainly interested by the quality and effect of sound. Comments of Debussy about Stravinsky were that “he was widening the borders of the allowed in the empire of sound”, and this could undoubtedly be referred to in his own work.

PERFORMED on SEPTEMBER 30, 2011
CASTRATI

CASTRATI

Contrary to popular belief, Lorem Ipsum is not simply random text. It has roots in a piece of classical Latin literature from 45 BC, making it over 2000 years old. Richard McClintock, a Latin professor at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, looked up one of the more obscure Latin words, consectetur, from a Lorem Ipsum passage, and going through the cites of the word in classical literature, discovered the undoubtable source.

PERFORMED on SEPTEMBER 28, 2005

GRAND THEATRE DU GENEVE

COR PERDUT

COR PERDUT

First performed by the Nederlands Dans Theater 2 in The Hague on 27 April, 1989

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: María del Mar Bonet after M.J.Berberian
Costumes: Nacho Duato
Lighting Design: Nacho Duato

Cor Perdut is a duet inspired on the song Bir Demet Yasemen, in the catalonian version done by mallorcan singer María del Mar Bonet from the original theme by M.J. Berberian. “It is not worth to cry /it is not worth to die / since desire is much stronger / just follow its own path”, sings the wonderful voice of María del Mar Bonet, whose enchanting power dominates Duato´s piece who has created this choreography as a birthday gift to the singer. Following the syncopated and hypnotic rhythm of the tunisian percussions the dancers recreates the dynamic and expressive body vocabulary of the choreographer perfectly matching the fluidity and sensuality of the singer´s voice.

PERFORMED on –
REMANSOS

REMANSOS

World premiere 5 Junio 1998, American Ballet Theatre ( New York), The City Center Theatre.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Enrique Granados
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Brad Fields/Nicolás Fischtel

First presented by American Ballet Theater, at City Center of New York on 5 November, 1997 and by Compañía Nacional de Danza of Spain at Teatro de Madrid, on 5 June, 1998.

Remanso, based on Poetic Watzes by Enrique Granados, has got major reception by audience and especialized critics.

Expresive power, geometry of lines, dinamics of space and forms, were some of the remarks about Duato´s work. From that very first version, Duato has extended the ballet for Compañía Nacional de Danza, transforming it into REMANSOS. Based on the music of Enrique Granados and inspired in the universe of Federico García Lorca Remansos, full of inventiviness, offers the observer a constant wink based on the perspicacity of movement.

PERFORMED on MAY 12, 2000

ZURICH BALLET

ARCANGELO

ARCANGELO

World Premiere by Compañía Nacional de Danza at Teatro Real de Madrid, 31 May, 2000

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Arcangelo Corelli (Concerti Grossi Op. 6), Domenico Scarlatti (Il primo omicidio)
Light: Brad Fields
Costumes : Nacho Duato in collaboration with Ismael Aznar
Scenery: Nacho Duato
Length Of Performance: 32 min

PERFORMED on MAY 8, 2008

THE NETHERLANDS

INTRODANS

Arnhem
COR PERDUT

COR PERDUT

First performed by the Nederlands Dans Theater 2 in The Hague on 27 April, 1989

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: María del Mar Bonet after M.J.Berberian
Costumes: Nacho Duato
Lighting Design: Nacho Duato

Cor Perdut is a duet inspired on the song Bir Demet Yasemen, in the catalonian version done by mallorcan singer María del Mar Bonet from the original theme by M.J. Berberian. “It is not worth to cry /it is not worth to die / since desire is much stronger / just follow its own path”, sings the wonderful voice of María del Mar Bonet, whose enchanting power dominates Duato´s piece who has created this choreography as a birthday gift to the singer. Following the syncopated and hypnotic rhythm of the tunisian percussions the dancers recreates the dynamic and expressive body vocabulary of the choreographer perfectly matching the fluidity and sensuality of the singer´s voice.

PERFORMED on FEBRUARY 16, 2001
NA FLORESTA

NA FLORESTA

World premiere 15 February 1990, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Heitor Villalobos ( Wagner Tisso)
Costumes: Nacho Duato
Scenery: Walter Nobbe
Lighting. Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on FEBRUARY 16, 2001
POR VOS MUERO

POR VOS MUERO

World premiere 11 April  1996, Compañía Nacional de Danza, teatro de Madrid.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Jordi Savall
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel
Texto Garcilaso de la Vega
Voz: Miguel Bosé

Duato has inspired in old Spanish music of XV and XVI centuries together with some of the most beautiful verses of the Spanish poet Garcilaso de la Vega. Music and poetry connect the obvious contemporary dance of Por Vos Muero to his historic reference.

In XV and XVI centuries dances formed part of the cultural expression of people, including all social hierarchies, and therefore they produced a honest reflection of culture of that time. Por Vos Muero wants to pay a tribute to the very important role that dance played in every sort of social event during those ancient times.

PERFORMED on OCTOBER 16, 2007
RASSEMBLEMENT

RASSEMBLEMENT

World premiere 27 February 1990, The Cullberg Ballet ( Stockholm), Hjalmar Bergman theatre ( Örebro)

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Toto Bissainthe
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on SEPTEMBER 11, 2009
SINFONIA INDIA

SINFONIA INDIA

World premiere 7 June 1984, The Netherlands Dance Theater, Circus Theatre Scheveningen.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Carlos Chávez
Costumes: Nacho Duato
Scenery: Walter Nobbe
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on OCTOBER 13, 2012
UCCELLI

UCCELLI

World premiere 17 Abril 1997, Compañía Nacional de Danza, Palacio de Festivales de Cantabria.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Ottorino Respighi
Costumes and scenery: Tom Schenk
Lighting: Joop Caboort

PERFORMED on FEBRUARY 23, 1997

NETHERLANDS DANCE THEATRE

The Hague
REMANSOS

REMANSOS

World premiere 5 Junio 1998, American Ballet Theatre ( New York), The City Center Theatre.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Enrique Granados
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Brad Fields/Nicolás Fischtel

First presented by American Ballet Theater, at City Center of New York on 5 November, 1997 and by Compañía Nacional de Danza of Spain at Teatro de Madrid, on 5 June, 1998.

Remanso, based on Poetic Watzes by Enrique Granados, has got major reception by audience and especialized critics.

Expresive power, geometry of lines, dinamics of space and forms, were some of the remarks about Duato´s work. From that very first version, Duato has extended the ballet for Compañía Nacional de Danza, transforming it into REMANSOS. Based on the music of Enrique Granados and inspired in the universe of Federico García Lorca Remansos, full of inventiviness, offers the observer a constant wink based on the perspicacity of movement.

PERFORMED on JANUARY 23, 2002
SELF

SELF

World premiere 17 Abril 1997, Compañía Nacional de Danza, Palacio de Festivales de Cantabria.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Alberto Iglesias
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Miguel Angel Camacho

PERFORMED on FEBRUARY 11, 1998

AGAIN AND AGAIN

PERFORMED on FEBRUARY 29, 1996

UNITED KINGDOM

THE ROYAL BALLET

London
REMANSOS

REMANSOS

World premiere 5 Junio 1998, American Ballet Theatre ( New York), The City Center Theatre.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Enrique Granados
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Brad Fields/Nicolás Fischtel

First presented by American Ballet Theater, at City Center of New York on 5 November, 1997 and by Compañía Nacional de Danza of Spain at Teatro de Madrid, on 5 June, 1998.

Remanso, based on Poetic Watzes by Enrique Granados, has got major reception by audience and especialized critics.

Expresive power, geometry of lines, dinamics of space and forms, were some of the remarks about Duato´s work. From that very first version, Duato has extended the ballet for Compañía Nacional de Danza, transforming it into REMANSOS. Based on the music of Enrique Granados and inspired in the universe of Federico García Lorca Remansos, full of inventiviness, offers the observer a constant wink based on the perspicacity of movement.

PERFORMED on JANUARY 27, 2012
POR VOS MUERO

POR VOS MUERO

World premiere 11 April  1996, Compañía Nacional de Danza, teatro de Madrid.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Jordi Savall
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel
Texto Garcilaso de la Vega
Voz: Miguel Bosé

Duato has inspired in old Spanish music of XV and XVI centuries together with some of the most beautiful verses of the Spanish poet Garcilaso de la Vega. Music and poetry connect the obvious contemporary dance of Por Vos Muero to his historic reference.

In XV and XVI centuries dances formed part of the cultural expression of people, including all social hierarchies, and therefore they produced a honest reflection of culture of that time. Por Vos Muero wants to pay a tribute to the very important role that dance played in every sort of social event during those ancient times.

PERFORMED on –

NORTHEN BALLET

Leeds
JARDI TANCAT

JARDI TANCAT

World premiere 19 December 1983, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: María del Mar Bonet
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on JULY 30, 1999

IVAN PUTROV

London
REMANSO

REMANSO

World premiere 5 November 1997, American Ballet Theatre ( New York), The City Center Theatre.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Enrique Granados
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Brad Fields

First presented by American Ballet Theater, at City Center of New York on 5 November, 1997 and by Compañía Nacional de Danza of Spain at Teatro de Madrid, on 5 June, 1998.

Remanso, based on Poetic Watzes by Enrique Granados, has got major reception by audience and especialized critics.

Expresive power, geometry of lines, dinamics of space and forms, were some of the remarks about Duato´s work. From that very first version, Duato has extended the ballet for Compañía Nacional de Danza, transforming it into REMANSOS. Based on the music of Enrique Granados and inspired in the universe of Federico García Lorca Remansos, full of inventiviness, offers the observer a constant wink based on the perspicacity of movement.

PERFORMED on –

URUGUAY

BALLET DEL SODRE

Montevideo
WITHOUT WORDS

WITHOUT WORDS

World premiere 29 October 1998, American Ballet Theatre, City Center Theatre (New York).

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Franz Schubert
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Brad Fields

PERFORMED on JUNE 8, 2012

USA

AMERICAN BALLET THEATRE

New Work
REMANSO

REMANSO

World premiere 5 November 1997, American Ballet Theatre ( New York), The City Center Theatre.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Enrique Granados
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Brad Fields

First presented by American Ballet Theater, at City Center of New York on 5 November, 1997 and by Compañía Nacional de Danza of Spain at Teatro de Madrid, on 5 June, 1998.

Remanso, based on Poetic Watzes by Enrique Granados, has got major reception by audience and especialized critics.

Expresive power, geometry of lines, dinamics of space and forms, were some of the remarks about Duato´s work. From that very first version, Duato has extended the ballet for Compañía Nacional de Danza, transforming it into REMANSOS. Based on the music of Enrique Granados and inspired in the universe of Federico García Lorca Remansos, full of inventiviness, offers the observer a constant wink based on the perspicacity of movement.

World Premiere
WITHOUT WORDS

WITHOUT WORDS

World premiere 29 October 1998, American Ballet Theatre, City Center Theatre (New York).

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Franz Schubert
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Brad Fields

World Premiere – PERFORMED on OCTOBER 29, 1998

BALLET HISPANICO DE NUEVA YORK

New Work
JARDI TANCAT

JARDI TANCAT

World premiere 19 December 1983, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: María del Mar Bonet
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on FEBRUARY 22, 2013

BOSTON BALLET

JARDI TANCAT

JARDI TANCAT

World premiere 19 December 1983, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: María del Mar Bonet
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on OCTOBER 25, 2001

BUTTLER UNIVERSITY

New Work
JARDI TANCAT

JARDI TANCAT

World premiere 19 December 1983, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: María del Mar Bonet
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on FEBRUARY 17, 2012

KINGS OF THE DANCE

Orange County
REMANSO

REMANSO

World premiere 5 November 1997, American Ballet Theatre ( New York), The City Center Theatre.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Enrique Granados
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Brad Fields

First presented by American Ballet Theater, at City Center of New York on 5 November, 1997 and by Compañía Nacional de Danza of Spain at Teatro de Madrid, on 5 June, 1998.

Remanso, based on Poetic Watzes by Enrique Granados, has got major reception by audience and especialized critics.

Expresive power, geometry of lines, dinamics of space and forms, were some of the remarks about Duato´s work. From that very first version, Duato has extended the ballet for Compañía Nacional de Danza, transforming it into REMANSOS. Based on the music of Enrique Granados and inspired in the universe of Federico García Lorca Remansos, full of inventiviness, offers the observer a constant wink based on the perspicacity of movement.

PERFORMED on NOVEMBER 11, 2009

DANCE THEATRE OF HARLEM

New Work
Coming togheter

COMING TOGETHER

World premiere by Compañía Nacional de Danza at Teatro de la Zarzuela, Madrid, 23 December 1991.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Frederic Rzewski(Coming Together)
Sets and Costumes: Nacho Duato
Light Design: Nicolás Fischtel


The turbulent repetition of musical structures and recited text from the Frederic Rzewski’s frantic composition provides with the accompaniment and counterpoint to an abstract work by Nacho Duato who uses his effervescence both to bring us closer to furious frenzy and hysterics, and as a contrast in his creation of oniric atmospheres. Both phenomenons appear alternatively as well as simultaneously as it could happen with the rhythms and sensations which develop within a big city.

 

The result, of an obvious comtemporary style, forces the spectator to focus his attention on the multiple changes of the choreographic process as well as on the system and structure of steps, instead of the ordinary descriptive and narrative elements.

 

Frederic Rzewski’s piece entitled Coming Together and Attica written for narrator and instruments, to be performed ad libitum in two parts, is of crucial importance in the history of repetitive music and not only because of its obvious influence on later pieces. Here the repetitive techniques and structuring are not an end in themselves but the means of creating a coherent musical, dramatic world. While this piece just like Rzewski’s other works makes use of improvisation and repetition it is also a committed work both in the social and the political sense. Rzewski managed to combine the political, ideological meaning of the text and the musical structure into a homogeneous whole by means of an original “minimal” idea.

 

The eight sentences from a letter by Sam Melville (a political prisoner killed in the 1971 Attica prison riots) are first narrated in an additive then in a deductive progression. The title of the piece is a reference to a sentence of the letter and to the technique of musical improvisation.

PERFORMED on FEBRUARY 25, 2016

HOUSTON BALLET

JARDI TANCAT

JARDI TANCAT

World premiere 19 December 1983, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: María del Mar Bonet
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on MAY 28, 2009
WITHOUT WORDS

WITHOUT WORDS

World premiere 29 October 1998, American Ballet Theatre, City Center Theatre (New York).

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Franz Schubert
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Brad Fields

PERFORMED on SEPTEMBER 7, 2000

HUBBARD STREET DANCE CO.

 Chicago
ARCANGELO

ARCANGELO

World Premiere by Compañía Nacional de Danza at Teatro Real de Madrid, 31 May, 2000

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Arcangelo Corelli (Concerti Grossi Op. 6), Domenico Scarlatti (Il primo omicidio)
Light: Brad Fields
Costumes : Nacho Duato in collaboration with Ismael Aznar
Scenery: Nacho Duato
Length Of Performance: 32 min

PERFORMED on SEPTEMBER 30, 2010
COR PERDUT

COR PERDUT

First performed by the Nederlands Dans Theater 2 in The Hague on 27 April, 1989

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: María del Mar Bonet after M.J.Berberian
Costumes: Nacho Duato
Lighting Design: Nacho Duato

Cor Perdut is a duet inspired on the song Bir Demet Yasemen, in the catalonian version done by mallorcan singer María del Mar Bonet from the original theme by M.J. Berberian. “It is not worth to cry /it is not worth to die / since desire is much stronger / just follow its own path”, sings the wonderful voice of María del Mar Bonet, whose enchanting power dominates Duato´s piece who has created this choreography as a birthday gift to the singer. Following the syncopated and hypnotic rhythm of the tunisian percussions the dancers recreates the dynamic and expressive body vocabulary of the choreographer perfectly matching the fluidity and sensuality of the singer´s voice.

PERFORMED on FEBRUARY 16, 2003
NA FLORESTA

NA FLORESTA

World premiere 15 February 1990, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Heitor Villalobos ( Wagner Tisso)
Costumes: Nacho Duato
Scenery: Walter Nobbe
Lighting. Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on JANUARY 31, 1997
GNAWA

GNAWA

World premiere 9 September 1993, Hubbard Street Dance Street ( Chicago-USA)
Premiere performance by the Hubbard Street Dance Chicago at the Joan W. and Irving B. Harris Theater for Music and Dance, March 2005
Premiered by the Compañía Nacional de Danza 2 at the Teatro Gran Vía, Madrid, the 18th of April 2007

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: collage
Costumes: Luis Devota y Modesto Lomba
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

In 1992 in his home city of Valencia, Nacho Duato premiered Mediterrania, searching deeper into his roots and those of his forebears, and his sense of complicity with the Mediterranean Sea.

In Gnawa, premiered by the Hubbard Street Dance Chicago in 2005, the renowned choreographer has continued along the path he set out on with Mediterrania, seeking to transmit, through the medium of movement, the sensuality of the landscape, the true nature of its peoples. With a suggestive musical score replete with Spanish and North African sounds, Gnawa captivates its audience through its all-encompassing power and its sensual elegance, combining the spirituality and organic rhythm of the Mediterranean.

Gnawa is the name that receives in Morocco and other parts of the Magreb the members of different mystic Muslim brotherhoods characterized by their sub-saharian origin and the use of song, dances and syncretic rituals as a mean to reach ecstasy. This term also refers to a musical style of sub-saharian reminiscences practised by these brotherhoods or by musicians inspired by them. It is considered one of the main Moroccan Folklore genres.  

 

PERFORMED on MARCH 30, 2005
JARDI TANCAT

JARDI TANCAT

World premiere 19 December 1983, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: María del Mar Bonet
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on OCTOBER 28, 1997
RASSEMBLEMENT

RASSEMBLEMENT

World premiere 27 February 1990, The Cullberg Ballet ( Stockholm), Hjalmar Bergman theatre ( Örebro)

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Toto Bissainthe
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on APRIL 13, 1999
VIOLONCELLO

VIOLONCELLO

 

PERFORMED on MARCH 15, 2017

JUILLIARD SCHOOL

New York
DUENDE

DUENDE

World premiere 21 November 1991, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague.
PREMIERE BY COMPAÑÍA NACIONAL DE DANZA AT THE TEATRO LÍRICO NACIONAL LA ZARZUELA, 11 DECEMBER, 1992

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Claude Debussy
Scenery: Walter Nobbe
Costumes: Susan Unger
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

Duato’s ‘ideas’ for a choreography are almost always preceded by his choice in music, which characterises his working method. Maybe this applies to Duende in particular, because the music was the only source of inspiration for this ballet. Long ago Duato fell in love with Debussy, especially by the way the composer makes nature sound in music. When he listens to this music, Duato visualises shapes, not people, relationships or events. This is why he considers Duende as an almost sculptural work: a body, a movement, that goes with the tune.

 

Duende literally means elfs and fairies, like the ones who tidy up children’s toys at night, but it can also mean rascal, a naughty child. One can also possess duende, when radiating energy and great charm, almost having a magical attraction. In Andalusia it is said flamenco has duende, which can hardly be translated into another language. Flamenco has a touch of spell, one might say, like the way black music has ‘soul’.

 

At the beginning of twentieth century Debussy was an unknown composer, and the public was suddenly listening to absolutely different sounds .Strange, beautiful and magical, as they must have been, these sounds have identified his complex cultural roots. Debussy’s music reveals classic and romantic origins apart from connections with lay music, the folk songs, Arab, eastern and slave cultures, and even with jazz.

 

Classicism may simply be explained as consecrated to form. In this sense, Romanticism is usually defined as the expression of emotions. However, the relationship between Debussy and these two concepts is not always as simple. Form and emotion are always present in his music, but more as the result of a process of insinuation than one of definition. In one of his rules for composers, Debussy wrote: “Discipline must be looked for in freedom”, this could be considered his first command.

 

Debussy is frequently identified with the impressionist artistic movement: but whereas painters like Monet gave a great importance to light, Debussy was mainly interested by the quality and effect of sound. Comments of Debussy about Stravinsky were that “he was widening the borders of the allowed in the empire of sound”, and this could undoubtedly be referred to in his own work.

PERFORMED on MARCH 24, 2004
GNAWA

GNAWA

World premiere 9 September 1993, Hubbard Street Dance Street ( Chicago-USA)
Premiere performance by the Hubbard Street Dance Chicago at the Joan W. and Irving B. Harris Theater for Music and Dance, March 2005
Premiered by the Compañía Nacional de Danza 2 at the Teatro Gran Vía, Madrid, the 18th of April 2007

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: collage
Costumes: Luis Devota y Modesto Lomba
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

In 1992 in his home city of Valencia, Nacho Duato premiered Mediterrania, searching deeper into his roots and those of his forebears, and his sense of complicity with the Mediterranean Sea.

In Gnawa, premiered by the Hubbard Street Dance Chicago in 2005, the renowned choreographer has continued along the path he set out on with Mediterrania, seeking to transmit, through the medium of movement, the sensuality of the landscape, the true nature of its peoples. With a suggestive musical score replete with Spanish and North African sounds, Gnawa captivates its audience through its all-encompassing power and its sensual elegance, combining the spirituality and organic rhythm of the Mediterranean.

Gnawa is the name that receives in Morocco and other parts of the Magreb the members of different mystic Muslim brotherhoods characterized by their sub-saharian origin and the use of song, dances and syncretic rituals as a mean to reach ecstasy. This term also refers to a musical style of sub-saharian reminiscences practised by these brotherhoods or by musicians inspired by them. It is considered one of the main Moroccan Folklore genres.  

 

PERFORMED on MARCH 28, 2012
POR VOS MUERO

POR VOS MUERO

World premiere 11 April  1996, Compañía Nacional de Danza, teatro de Madrid.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Jordi Savall
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel
Texto Garcilaso de la Vega
Voz: Miguel Bosé

Duato has inspired in old Spanish music of XV and XVI centuries together with some of the most beautiful verses of the Spanish poet Garcilaso de la Vega. Music and poetry connect the obvious contemporary dance of Por Vos Muero to his historic reference.

In XV and XVI centuries dances formed part of the cultural expression of people, including all social hierarchies, and therefore they produced a honest reflection of culture of that time. Por Vos Muero wants to pay a tribute to the very important role that dance played in every sort of social event during those ancient times.

PERFORMED on MARCH 22, 2017

KANSAS CITY BALLET

JARDI TANCAT

JARDI TANCAT

World premiere 19 December 1983, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: María del Mar Bonet
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on OCTOBER 10, 2002

MIAMI CITY BALLET

JARDI TANCAT

JARDI TANCAT

World premiere 19 December 1983, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: María del Mar Bonet
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on JANUARY 10, 2014

NORTH CAROLINA DANCE THEATRE

 Charlotte
NA FLORESTA

NA FLORESTA

World premiere 15 February 1990, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Heitor Villalobos ( Wagner Tisso)
Costumes: Nacho Duato
Scenery: Walter Nobbe
Lighting. Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on MARCH 8, 2007
JARDI TANCAT

JARDI TANCAT

World premiere 19 December 1983, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: María del Mar Bonet
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on MAY 12, 2001

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY

JARDI TANCAT

JARDI TANCAT

World premiere 19 December 1983, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: María del Mar Bonet
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on DECEMBER 5, 2002

OKLAHOMA CITY BALLET

WITHOUT WORDS

WITHOUT WORDS

World premiere 29 October 1998, American Ballet Theatre, City Center Theatre (New York).

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Franz Schubert
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Brad Fields

PERFORMED on FEBRUARY 26, 2016

PENNSYLVANIA CITY BALLET

 Philadelphia
WITHOUT WORDS

WITHOUT WORDS

World premiere 29 October 1998, American Ballet Theatre, City Center Theatre (New York).

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Franz Schubert
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Brad Fields

PERFORMED on FEBRUARY 4, 2016
REMANSOS

REMANSOS

World premiere 5 Junio 1998, American Ballet Theatre ( New York), The City Center Theatre.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Enrique Granados
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Brad Fields/Nicolás Fischtel

First presented by American Ballet Theater, at City Center of New York on 5 November, 1997 and by Compañía Nacional de Danza of Spain at Teatro de Madrid, on 5 June, 1998.

Remanso, based on Poetic Watzes by Enrique Granados, has got major reception by audience and especialized critics.

Expresive power, geometry of lines, dinamics of space and forms, were some of the remarks about Duato´s work. From that very first version, Duato has extended the ballet for Compañía Nacional de Danza, transforming it into REMANSOS. Based on the music of Enrique Granados and inspired in the universe of Federico García Lorca Remansos, full of inventiviness, offers the observer a constant wink based on the perspicacity of movement.

PERFORMED on APRIL 6, 2017

OREGON BALLET THEATRE

Portland
COR PERDUT

COR PERDUT

First performed by the Nederlands Dans Theater 2 in The Hague on 27 April, 1989

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: María del Mar Bonet after M.J.Berberian
Costumes: Nacho Duato
Lighting Design: Nacho Duato

Cor Perdut is a duet inspired on the song Bir Demet Yasemen, in the catalonian version done by mallorcan singer María del Mar Bonet from the original theme by M.J. Berberian. “It is not worth to cry /it is not worth to die / since desire is much stronger / just follow its own path”, sings the wonderful voice of María del Mar Bonet, whose enchanting power dominates Duato´s piece who has created this choreography as a birthday gift to the singer. Following the syncopated and hypnotic rhythm of the tunisian percussions the dancers recreates the dynamic and expressive body vocabulary of the choreographer perfectly matching the fluidity and sensuality of the singer´s voice.

PERFORMED on APRIL 17, 2014
JARDI TANCAT

JARDI TANCAT

World premiere 19 December 1983, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: María del Mar Bonet
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on APRIL 13, 2017
EL NARANJO

EL NARANJO

 

PERFORMED on APRIL 13, 2017
POR VOS MUERO

POR VOS MUERO

World premiere 11 April  1996, Compañía Nacional de Danza, teatro de Madrid.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Jordi Savall
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel
Texto Garcilaso de la Vega
Voz: Miguel Bosé

Duato has inspired in old Spanish music of XV and XVI centuries together with some of the most beautiful verses of the Spanish poet Garcilaso de la Vega. Music and poetry connect the obvious contemporary dance of Por Vos Muero to his historic reference.

In XV and XVI centuries dances formed part of the cultural expression of people, including all social hierarchies, and therefore they produced a honest reflection of culture of that time. Por Vos Muero wants to pay a tribute to the very important role that dance played in every sort of social event during those ancient times.

PERFORMED on OCTOBER 12, 2013
RASSEMBLEMENT

RASSEMBLEMENT

World premiere 27 February 1990, The Cullberg Ballet ( Stockholm), Hjalmar Bergman theatre ( Örebro)

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Toto Bissainthe
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on APRIL 16, 2015

PACIFIC NORTHWEST BALLET

Seattle
JARDI TANCAT

JARDI TANCAT

World premiere 19 December 1983, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: María del Mar Bonet
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on APRIL 7, 1998
RASSEMBLEMENT

RASSEMBLEMENT

World premiere 27 February 1990, The Cullberg Ballet ( Stockholm), Hjalmar Bergman theatre ( Örebro)

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Toto Bissainthe
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on APRIL 7, 1998

UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

Seattle
JARDI TANCAT

JARDI TANCAT

World premiere 19 December 1983, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: María del Mar Bonet
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on OCTOBER 9, 2014

SAN FRANCISCO BALLET

WITHOUT WORDS

WITHOUT WORDS

World premiere 29 October 1998, American Ballet Theatre, City Center Theatre (New York).

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Franz Schubert
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Brad Fields

PERFORMED on FEBRUARY 21, 2001

TULSA BALLET THEATRE

Coming togheter

COMING TOGETHER

World premiere by Compañía Nacional de Danza at Teatro de la Zarzuela, Madrid, 23 December 1991.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Frederic Rzewski(Coming Together)
Sets and Costumes: Nacho Duato
Light Design: Nicolás Fischtel


The turbulent repetition of musical structures and recited text from the Frederic Rzewski’s frantic composition provides with the accompaniment and counterpoint to an abstract work by Nacho Duato who uses his effervescence both to bring us closer to furious frenzy and hysterics, and as a contrast in his creation of oniric atmospheres. Both phenomenons appear alternatively as well as simultaneously as it could happen with the rhythms and sensations which develop within a big city.

 

The result, of an obvious comtemporary style, forces the spectator to focus his attention on the multiple changes of the choreographic process as well as on the system and structure of steps, instead of the ordinary descriptive and narrative elements.

 

Frederic Rzewski’s piece entitled Coming Together and Attica written for narrator and instruments, to be performed ad libitum in two parts, is of crucial importance in the history of repetitive music and not only because of its obvious influence on later pieces. Here the repetitive techniques and structuring are not an end in themselves but the means of creating a coherent musical, dramatic world. While this piece just like Rzewski’s other works makes use of improvisation and repetition it is also a committed work both in the social and the political sense. Rzewski managed to combine the political, ideological meaning of the text and the musical structure into a homogeneous whole by means of an original “minimal” idea.

 

The eight sentences from a letter by Sam Melville (a political prisoner killed in the 1971 Attica prison riots) are first narrated in an additive then in a deductive progression. The title of the piece is a reference to a sentence of the letter and to the technique of musical improvisation.

PERFORMED on NOVEMBER 3, 2000
DUENDE

DUENDE

World premiere 21 November 1991, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague.
PREMIERE BY COMPAÑÍA NACIONAL DE DANZA AT THE TEATRO LÍRICO NACIONAL LA ZARZUELA, 11 DECEMBER, 1992

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Claude Debussy
Scenery: Walter Nobbe
Costumes: Susan Unger
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

Duato’s ‘ideas’ for a choreography are almost always preceded by his choice in music, which characterises his working method. Maybe this applies to Duende in particular, because the music was the only source of inspiration for this ballet. Long ago Duato fell in love with Debussy, especially by the way the composer makes nature sound in music. When he listens to this music, Duato visualises shapes, not people, relationships or events. This is why he considers Duende as an almost sculptural work: a body, a movement, that goes with the tune.

 

Duende literally means elfs and fairies, like the ones who tidy up children’s toys at night, but it can also mean rascal, a naughty child. One can also possess duende, when radiating energy and great charm, almost having a magical attraction. In Andalusia it is said flamenco has duende, which can hardly be translated into another language. Flamenco has a touch of spell, one might say, like the way black music has ‘soul’.

 

At the beginning of twentieth century Debussy was an unknown composer, and the public was suddenly listening to absolutely different sounds .Strange, beautiful and magical, as they must have been, these sounds have identified his complex cultural roots. Debussy’s music reveals classic and romantic origins apart from connections with lay music, the folk songs, Arab, eastern and slave cultures, and even with jazz.

 

Classicism may simply be explained as consecrated to form. In this sense, Romanticism is usually defined as the expression of emotions. However, the relationship between Debussy and these two concepts is not always as simple. Form and emotion are always present in his music, but more as the result of a process of insinuation than one of definition. In one of his rules for composers, Debussy wrote: “Discipline must be looked for in freedom”, this could be considered his first command.

 

Debussy is frequently identified with the impressionist artistic movement: but whereas painters like Monet gave a great importance to light, Debussy was mainly interested by the quality and effect of sound. Comments of Debussy about Stravinsky were that “he was widening the borders of the allowed in the empire of sound”, and this could undoubtedly be referred to in his own work.

PERFORMED on NOVEMBER 9, 2002
ARENAL

ARENAL

World premiere 26 Enero 1988, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: María del Mar Bonet
Scenery: Walter Nobbe
Costumes: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Rdward Effron

PERFORMED on NOVEMBER 7, 2003
GNAWA

GNAWA

World premiere 9 September 1993, Hubbard Street Dance Street ( Chicago-USA)
Premiere performance by the Hubbard Street Dance Chicago at the Joan W. and Irving B. Harris Theater for Music and Dance, March 2005
Premiered by the Compañía Nacional de Danza 2 at the Teatro Gran Vía, Madrid, the 18th of April 2007

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: collage
Costumes: Luis Devota y Modesto Lomba
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

In 1992 in his home city of Valencia, Nacho Duato premiered Mediterrania, searching deeper into his roots and those of his forebears, and his sense of complicity with the Mediterranean Sea.

In Gnawa, premiered by the Hubbard Street Dance Chicago in 2005, the renowned choreographer has continued along the path he set out on with Mediterrania, seeking to transmit, through the medium of movement, the sensuality of the landscape, the true nature of its peoples. With a suggestive musical score replete with Spanish and North African sounds, Gnawa captivates its audience through its all-encompassing power and its sensual elegance, combining the spirituality and organic rhythm of the Mediterranean.

Gnawa is the name that receives in Morocco and other parts of the Magreb the members of different mystic Muslim brotherhoods characterized by their sub-saharian origin and the use of song, dances and syncretic rituals as a mean to reach ecstasy. This term also refers to a musical style of sub-saharian reminiscences practised by these brotherhoods or by musicians inspired by them. It is considered one of the main Moroccan Folklore genres.  

 

PERFORMED on OCTOBER 31, 2008
L'AMOROSO

L’AMOROSO

World premiere by Compañía Nacional de Danza 2 at Teatro de Madrid on  May 21,  2004

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Guido Balestracci
Costumes: Nacho Duato
Scenery: Walter Nobbe
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

L’Amoroso is Nacho Duato’s first piece created expressly for the Compañía Nacional de Danza 2.
The choreographer uses a selection of concerts of viola da gamba from the Italian baroque. The soft, artful music and the freshness and youth of the dancers inspire Duato to create a dynamic and vital atmosphere on stage.

PERFORMED on OCTOBER 31, 2008
POR VOS MUERO

POR VOS MUERO

World premiere 11 April  1996, Compañía Nacional de Danza, teatro de Madrid.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Jordi Savall
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel
Texto Garcilaso de la Vega
Voz: Miguel Bosé

Duato has inspired in old Spanish music of XV and XVI centuries together with some of the most beautiful verses of the Spanish poet Garcilaso de la Vega. Music and poetry connect the obvious contemporary dance of Por Vos Muero to his historic reference.

In XV and XVI centuries dances formed part of the cultural expression of people, including all social hierarchies, and therefore they produced a honest reflection of culture of that time. Por Vos Muero wants to pay a tribute to the very important role that dance played in every sort of social event during those ancient times.

PERFORMED on NOVEMBER 17, 2006
RASSEMBLEMENT

RASSEMBLEMENT

World premiere 27 February 1990, The Cullberg Ballet ( Stockholm), Hjalmar Bergman theatre ( Örebro)

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Toto Bissainthe
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on NOVEMBER 9, 2001
REMANSOS

REMANSOS

World premiere 5 Junio 1998, American Ballet Theatre ( New York), The City Center Theatre.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Enrique Granados
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Brad Fields/Nicolás Fischtel

First presented by American Ballet Theater, at City Center of New York on 5 November, 1997 and by Compañía Nacional de Danza of Spain at Teatro de Madrid, on 5 June, 1998.

Remanso, based on Poetic Watzes by Enrique Granados, has got major reception by audience and especialized critics.

Expresive power, geometry of lines, dinamics of space and forms, were some of the remarks about Duato´s work. From that very first version, Duato has extended the ballet for Compañía Nacional de Danza, transforming it into REMANSOS. Based on the music of Enrique Granados and inspired in the universe of Federico García Lorca Remansos, full of inventiviness, offers the observer a constant wink based on the perspicacity of movement.

PERFORMED on MARCH 28, 2008
WITHOUT WORDS

WITHOUT WORDS

World premiere 29 October 1998, American Ballet Theatre, City Center Theatre (New York).

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Franz Schubert
Costumes and scenery: Nacho Duato
Lighting: Brad Fields

PERFORMED on NOVEMBER 5, 2004

WASHINGTON BALLET

COR PERDUT

COR PERDUT

First performed by the Nederlands Dans Theater 2 in The Hague on 27 April, 1989

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: María del Mar Bonet after M.J.Berberian
Costumes: Nacho Duato
Lighting Design: Nacho Duato

Cor Perdut is a duet inspired on the song Bir Demet Yasemen, in the catalonian version done by mallorcan singer María del Mar Bonet from the original theme by M.J. Berberian. “It is not worth to cry /it is not worth to die / since desire is much stronger / just follow its own path”, sings the wonderful voice of María del Mar Bonet, whose enchanting power dominates Duato´s piece who has created this choreography as a birthday gift to the singer. Following the syncopated and hypnotic rhythm of the tunisian percussions the dancers recreates the dynamic and expressive body vocabulary of the choreographer perfectly matching the fluidity and sensuality of the singer´s voice.

PERFORMED on OCTOBER 23, 2008
NA FLORESTA

NA FLORESTA

World premiere 15 February 1990, The Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague.

Choreography: Nacho Duato
Music: Heitor Villalobos ( Wagner Tisso)
Costumes: Nacho Duato
Scenery: Walter Nobbe
Lighting. Nicolás Fischtel

PERFORMED on –


GOYO MONTERO

MEDIART PRODUCTIONS in collaboration with GOYO MONTERO

SPAIN

COMPAÑIA NACIONAL DE DANZA

MADRID

ROMEO Y JULIETA

PERFORMED on APRIL 16, 2012

URUGUAY

BALLET DEL SODRE

Montevideo

CHACONA

PERFORMED on JULY 27, 2017

RUSSIA

PERM BALLET-DIANA VISHNEVA´S FESTIVAL

ASUNDER

PERFORMED on NOVEMBER 13, 2017

GENTIAN DODA

MEDIART PRODUCTIONS in collaboration with GENTIAN DODA

ITALY

TEATRO MASSIMO

Palermo

SIN LO CUAL NO

PERFORMED on APRIL 28, 2018

HILDE KOCH

MEDIART PRODUCTIONS in collaboration with HILDE KOCH