Madrid
I N T E R N AT I O N A L
Above: Esteban Berlanga in Ricardo Cue’s The Swan
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48
Dance International
Spring 2015
by Justine Bayod Espoz
dance
Right: Mar Aguiló, Lucio Vidal and Dean Vervoot in Tony Fabre’s Violin d’Ingres Photos: Jesús Vallinas
T
he Spanish National Dance Company’s 2014-2015 season is its proud 35th, and to celebrate, a two-day commemorative anniversary gala was held in Madrid. The Spanish capital’s Teatros del Canal was packed to the rafters on opening night, October 19, with a veritable who’s who of Spanish dance world glitterati, including dancers, choreographers, directors, critics and politicians.
During a lovingly crafted four-hour celebration, pieces from each period of the company’s repertoire were restaged, interspersed with video montages of performances under each of its six directors, and an exhibition of costumes placed on display in the lobby. Director José Carlos Martínez believes that the gala — which included performances by the Spanish National Dance Company, as well as by Victor Ullate Ballet and the National Ballet of Spain
(all three are sister companies that receive national funding) — gave him the opportunity to “build bridges of collaboration with our country’s dance collectives and defend synergy as the best way in which to fight the economic crisis, so as to continue joining forces and making this anniversary a celebration for all.” With the recent passing of two members of the company, the anniversary also served to pay homage to their legacy. Tony Fabre passed away at just 49 in late 2013. After dancing for Maurice Béjart, the Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet and the Basler Ballett, Fabre joined the Spanish National Dance Company in 1991 and remained as a principal dancer until 1997. In 1999, he became assistant artistic director of CND2, the secondary ensemble that trains young dancers and serves as a springboard to the primary company. For the gala, Fabre’s Violon d’Ingres, premiered by CND2 in 2005, was restaged, a work inspired by Paganini’s, Bach’s and Vivaldi’s compositions for strings. In French the term violon d’Ingres refers to a hobby and, in a program note, Fabre explains how he envisioned the dancers as personifying violin chords whose hobby wasn’t music but rather dancing. The bare black stage is like the body of a violin upon which strings dance, while the large-scale fingerboard and scroll that lay upstage provided a creatively employed piece of staging as dancers lay across the fingerboard or curled into the arches and angles of the scroll, sometimes vibrating as though plucked and at other times springing forward as though snapping from being wound too tight. The piece is clever, and Fabre’s analogy is clear, but there isn’t sufficient variation to keep the piece from ultimately feeling just a little too long. The second homage was in memory of María de Ávila, whose impact on classical and Spanish dance in Spain spanned three quarters of a century, ending with her passing last February. However, her legacy lives on today, notably through her professional dance conservatory in Madrid and dance academy in Zaragoza. Ávila became the prima ballerina of Barcelona’s Ballet del Liceu in 1939 at 19 years of age, later dancing in the Ballet de Barcelona and the Spanish
Company of Ballet. As a teacher, she is responsible for having trained some of ballet’s most important Spanish dancers, including Victor Ullate, the Spanish National Dance Company’s first director. Four years after Ullate’s tenure, in 1983, Ávila was not only named Ullate’s successor, but also the director of the National Ballet of Spain. The National Ballet of Spain performed one of its most emblematic pieces, Ritmos, choreographed by Alberto Lorca under Ávila’s direction and premiered in 1984. Shunning fast and complex movements, the vibrancy of Ritmos is provided by José Nieto’s stunning, almost epic musical score. The restrained sobriety of the choreography seems at odds with his impassioned score, but this contrast and the lack of flashy choreographic flourish allows one to concentrate closely on the intricacy of the company’s impeccable timing and the ease and grace with which such a large body of dancers glides together and around one another without
missing a step, a bow of the arm or a twist of those impeccable Spanish hands. In a statement for the gala’s program, former National Dance Company director Ray Barra pointed out that under Nacho Duato’s 20-year directorship, the classical repertory that Barra and Ávila worked so hard to establish was replaced with contemporary dance works, but that now under Martínez, “I have the impression that the classical repertory is returning and that the [National Dance Company] could once again become one of the great European classical companies.” If the gala is any indication, with its varied pieces by such disparate choreographers as Petipa and Ohad Naharin, the National Dance Company has a talented enough ensemble, a strong enough directorship and a long enough history that it can tackle anything, from the most traditionally classical to the most experimentally contemporary, without breaking a sweat. t
Spring 2015
Dance International
49