Chekhov Festival meets Spain’s contemporary dance icons

The Spanish National Dance Company has brought its one-act ballets to Moscow within the confines of the Chekhov Theater Festival’s next edition. Nacho Duato’s productions feature in the program.

­The two programs that will run in Moscow’s Mossovet Theater from July 13 through July 23, include both Nacho Duato’s productions and ballet works, created after he left the post of the National Dance Company’s Artistic Director for the same position in St. Petersburg’s Mikhailovsky Theater.

The first program, which will run through to July 16, will feature Nacho Duato’s ballet Gnawa, a production that looks back at the traditions and spiritual dances of the Sahara-originating tribes and the rhythms of the Mediterranean peoples. Another Duato’s production on the menu is a choreographic meditation on the meaning of Heaven and Hell Arcangelo, based on the music by Italian composer Archangelo Corelli.

The third ballet of the first program will be Flockwork by Alexander Ekman. The second program will feature Philippe Blanchard’s Noodles and Duato’s White Darkness.

Moscow’s Chekhov Festival will see the National Dance Company’s troupe will perform Duato’s ballets for the last lime.  

“After Nacho Duato’s departure we have worked hard. We are not just trying to preserve what Nacho, with whom I’ve worked for many years, gave us, but also to invite choreographers, who give the dancers a chance to try something new. Global changes await the theater ahead,”
the current artistic director of the Spanish National Dance Company Herve Palito is quoted by RIA Novosti news agency as saying.

The said changes refer to the Etoile of the Paris Opera Ballet, Jose Martinez who is expected to head the Spanish National Dance Company in September this year. According to Palito, this will slow down the growth of the gap between classical ballet and the idea of contemporary dance propagated by the National Dance Company for the past years. Points long forgotten by the troupe may be recovered; however such iconic classical ballet productions as, for example, Swan Lake will not be staged here, as the troupe totals only 28 dancers.

Leave a comment