It was a challenge to create a complete work on the music of Bach, without dwarfing the choreographer, but Nacho Duato has done it. With love and reverence he has exquisitely stitched a collage in which the Baroque genius is perfectly explained as a character, and where his music transcends with the sense of modernity and multiplicity that history has granted him.
If Duato is a master in the translation of the impulse of the notes into dance, here he has taken care with the depth, the transparency of ideas, and the dramatic ties. There is something for all tastes in the motivations of the dance: resonant vitality, rhythm, feeling, portrait. The members of the magnificent company burst from their seats to become instruments vibrating under Bach's baton.
(…) The first part of the show is vibrant, joyful, intimate, unrestrained, witty, and transcendental. Rich in ideas, gestures, and stage tones (…) The second part of Multiplicidad, Formas de Silencio y Vacío (Multiplicity, Forms of Silence and Emptiness) is denser, with loneliness and fog. Duets are repeated as memories of love, and there is death already accepted.
(…) Multiplicidad, the first part of this choreography, is without a doubt one of Nacho Duato's finest works (…) each fragment has its choreographic intention, and the end result is a performance filled with beautiful moments, into which the Valencian creator has poured himself.
Last night, one of the most eagerly awaited events of the spring took place at the Teatro Real: the new premieres by the Spain's most recognized and world-renowned choreographer. Duato did not disappoint. Once again he transported us to a world of suggestions, aimed at interesting and current themes with the beauty of shapes in space and time. With rich nuances from the prodigious hands of director Jordi Savall, the performances become exceptional works of art.
(…) Nacho Duato is great again, both in the cultural foundation of his show and in his commendable choreographic work. The dancers of the Compañía Nacional de Danza (CND) masterfully interpret the privileged selection of beautiful compositions by Bach, but without a doubt, what is most appreciated is the great beauty that the dancers know how to offer, and which so often ultimately is not given to us to enjoy. The audience that filled the Liceu on the opening night of the show also recognized this with its long and warm applause.
If, as an admirer once said, "Bach is God", then with the help of Nacho Duato and his Compañía Nacional de Danza, the composer descended to earth and settled on the stage of the shining Liceu. Duato has paid an extremely personal tribute to the one known as "the fifth evangelist". He has found a devilishly close tone, which will probably set differences with everything that has been done in the area of choreography based on Bach upuntil now.
Duato knew three things clearly: that the music of Bach has an exceptional dramatic component; that it is not music that is beautiful, but rather music that requires the listener to live with it; and, also that it does not require visual support since it enters the soul of the listener directly. All of these factors have given him enormous freedom, with which he has played brilliantly, crossing the borders between music and movement with surprising ease.
(…) A great ballet, which, without a doubt had an unbeatable libretto: that of music in capital letters.
To accept the challenge of the music of Bach is for the brave or the ignorant. Duato is one of the former, and now, with sufficient experience as a choreographer, has dared to use it. Conscious and trapped by a feeling of attraction towards the composer, Duato, respectful and daring, shows that he is well enough armed to emerge unscathed from this great dialogue in which Bach sublimates movement. Alone on the stage, austere and dressed in black, Duato cuts a powerful figure, which, as the dance progresses, reaches solemn dimensions. Absolute master of his still fine dance form, with this solo he is asking the genius to pardon him for his daring. Following these minutes of humility, emotion bursts forth in the form of musical notes and choreographed movement.
(…) and nothing would be the same without the dancers. It would be unfair to mention names because all shine in their personalities and back the solidity of the group.
(…) The Compañía, full of strength, was again an example for the world of dance, provoking enthusiasm in the public, with a full house.
(…) Although the elements could seem complex, as in the case of Mediterrania, the effect is sensitive and even sensualist, and the paraphernalia seems to be lost on creating a climate that music, light and dance provoke on the well rounded off, solid and, why not? spectacular ensemble.
Victims and hangmen. Violence and torture. The spectator travels to the hell of a concentration camp while sitting in his/her seat at the Royal Opera House in Madrid. This is the proposal of the Compañía Nacional de Danza (CND) for the opening of the season 2000-2001 in Madrid's top theatre. Lamento, one of the most committed works of Duato, is a face to face with the Holocaust. However, perhaps it intends to go beyond that. It is a head-to-head with the intolerance that consumes us everyday; also here, in Spain. An up-to-date choreography, especially nowadays, so needed, as we are, of reflection; so used, as we are, to question the Nazis' barbarism, the death caravans, the persecution of the "different" and so many other miseries. Górecki's Third symphony embraces this piece, based on the death of a child, his parents' pain and the schizophrenia of a groupof convicts in an atmosphere full of desolation and miseries. There is a social commitment and this embellishes art. Lamento is a great ballet.
It is difficult to set out the drama on a stage from the balanced point of view. Without excesses. Without easy escapes. What can some dancers tell about the Holocaust? Difficult answer. To build a world of so primary feelings, and at the same time, so complex using the silent language of the body, is infinitely more difficult than to enchain a set of steps. However, this is the best move of the choreography: its emotional intensity. In this creation (first performed by the Nederlands Dans Theater II in 1990), Duato has set upa dramatic construction of overwhelming strength (…).
Last night, in the season opening of the Royal Opera House in Madrid, the already valued legacy with which Duato is writing the future, has been further increased. He presented a difficult and risky programme, three short pieces on similar subjects: suffering, evil, and the power of some over others, those who suffer. He added, to the wealth of his perceptions over the crudest of realities, an equal and surprising ability in the aesthetic and formal conception, expressing, with plurality, the different ways of suffering, making totally different these three pieces.
(…) Duato is an artist, who shows that art, apart from being beauty and poetry, is also the maximum and deepest model of human reality, and reminds us that, in our reality, there is much that ought to be changed. We shall have to wait until May to admire again Duato's choreographic, aesthetic and philosophic genius.
(…) Arcángelo (Archangel), another harmonious creation, illustrates with a succession of different duets concerti grossi de Corelli (…) The choreographer also offers something that is very rare in our times: love duets that evoke sweetness and peace.
(…) Por Vos Muero (I die for you) needs no introduction, simply because I consider this work, which premiered in 1996, to be the masterpiece of its creator still. The simplification of the elements evokes a sense of perfection that the music that is used possesses in its mixture of grace and populism, ingenuity, and analysis of the sentiments. But I do not want enthusiasm and emotion to subtract words from the two openings of this season: Arcángelo, with music by Corelli, and Ofrenda de Sombras, which also uses old music styles in a fascinating and superficial electronic collage created by Alberto Iglesias, lend continuity and also magnificence to a "duatan" line that has obtained, or that must obtain, universal recognition.