Also this issue: Is There a Left Left? Finding a place for liberalism in the new America. -Sam Adams Making the Video Doug Aitken's work mixes film, art, social commentary and a dash of MTV. -Robin Rice More Than Words -Sam Adams Wares House -Diane Eacret History Lessons -Elisa Ludwig Sets and Lucia -Steve Cohen Carmen, and All the Rest! -Howard Altman Run and Hyde -Toby Zinman

November 7-13, 2002

dance

Nacho Duato

by Janet Anderson

Nacho Duato, artistic director and choreographer of National Dance Company of Spain, accompanies his troupe this week on its first visit to Philly. The company will perform Duato’s Multiplicity: Forms of Silence and Emptiness, an evening-length piece inspired by Bach’s life and work. A noted innovator, the elegant Duato speaks many languages, none more eloquently than the language of dance.

City Paper: You began your training in England?

Nacho Duato: I wanted to study ballet and at that time there were no good schools in Spain. At age 16 I went to London and auditioned for the Ballet Rambert School... I was told I was too old to start dancing and that I had no technique, no training... But I was one of two boys taken... then I was told, you don't know much about dance but you have something special that makes me look at you all the time even if you do everything wrong.

CP: Do you look for that "special" quality in your dancers?

ND: Dance is an expression you should share with the audience. It's like some young dancers don't have anything to share, it's all for them. Ultimately to share you have to have a life, you can't just have technique. I'd rather have a dancer who doesn't have that much technique but has the ability to connect with the audience.

CP: What's your dance style?

ND: It's contemporary, of course, but with a very strong classical base. I don't think a modern dancer with no classical training could work with me. You must have the turn-out, the pointed feet, the graciousness that classical dance gives the dancer.

CP: When did you begin doing choreography?

ND: I found my artistic dance home with Nederlands Dans Theater and Jirí Kylián in 1981. I did my first ballet, Jardí Tancat [in 1983] and, since then, I haven't stopped. Jirí saw the choreographer in me and pushed me. Jardí was a big success, and I won the prize in Cologne [at the International Choreographic Workshop], but after that I didn't want to do more, and Jirí said, "You must be crazy, you have to..."

CP: When you went to National Ballet of Spain as artistic director in 1990, the company was 11 years old and had already been through four directors!

ND: When I got to the company it was really in a low place because of all the changes, and because the repertoire was very stale, and they had almost no performances. So with the dancers there was a bit of anarchy. And the saddest thing was the company had no style, no personality, no identity and that was the first thing I wanted to achieve -- to give them a stamp, a look that says this company really dances.

CP: Are the dancers now all ones you selected?

ND: Yes, slowly I've been changing the company. People left because the style changed and also because I made them work so hard. So I managed to change the company without having to fire anyone. About half the company are foreign, not Spanish. It inspires me to have all the different cultures and people from so many parts of the world. Maybe the audience will see the world as it should be -- open and free.

CP: Do you still dance?

ND: I am dancing this week in Multiplicity. I open and close the performance. I begin with a solo to an aria from the Goldberg Variations where I ask Johann Sebastian Bach's permission to use his music, and forgiveness for being so, you know... [laughs] stupid. And for putting in my hands his incredible composition. And then at the end, when Bach dies, I thank him for such an incredible legacy of music and culture.

CP: In other words, you're still dancing.

ND: A little bit. It's good for me to keep more in touch with the dancers, and not forget how difficult dance is, how vulnerable the dancer can be. And also you keep more in shape. When I make choreography I cannot do it from a chair, I must be moving with them. So I make little appearances, like Hitchcock, here and there.

National Dance Company of Spain, Thu.-Sat., Nov. 7-9, $28-$36, Annenberg Center, 3680 Walnut St., 215-898-3900.