Rafael Bonachela (La Garriga, 1972) does not hide his joy at the prospect of taking over the Mercat de les Flors for two weeks with the Sydney Dance Company, the company he has directed for three decades now. “It's been 16 years,” he says, surprised. I was happy in London when they asked me to direct it. I didn't even think about it, but it was very tempting to be able to create with 16 contemporary dancers with a 12-month contract! And commissioning other creators, something unthinkable with my own company in London,” says this Catalan who once choreographed for big music stars. “What Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui does today with Madonna, I did in the early 2000s with Kylie Minogue.”
Sydney Dance comes to Barcelona with two very attractive programs that are part of the Dansa Metropolitana and which the artist uses to show two of his own pieces, plus the highly awarded Forever
Thus, from today to Saturday the 16th you can see a triple bill under the title of Ascent that, as its name indicates, wants to lift the spirits. The 16 Sydney dancers with whom Bonachela tours each year are divided among the different pieces. Thus, the choreographer has broken his choral register and has worked this time in quartet format with that I Am-ness, a concept that invites him to explore “the person understood as a whole, body, mind, consciousness.” They are 12 minutes in which, without starting from improvisation, he invites constant interaction between the dancers, “working, breathing and beating as one.”
Also from Bonachela, Impermanence will be shown on the 19th and 20th, a larger-scale piece whose music is a personal request that the Catalan choreographer made to Bryce Dessner, founding member of the band The National, guitarist, arranger and main co-author of the songs. . Author of the soundtrack of The Revenant, which earned him a Grammy and Golden Glos nomination, and of The Two Popes, Dessner (one of the identical twins of the Brooklyn band) has a stunning resume that links him to the contemporary scene, from collaborations with Kronos Quartet, Philip Glass and Steve Reich to commissions by the Orchester de Paris or the Los Angeles Philharmonic, or avant-garde projects with Paul Simon, Ryuichi Sakamoto or Jonny Greenwood. But he also composes ballets!
“I had already used his music to choreograph but I had not met him yet when, taking advantage of The National performing at the Sydney Opera House, I invited him to a company rehearsal: a piece of mine based on his music. And immediately he asked me, 'When will we work together?' And I, who already had the answer prepared, told him that in March 2020. And as you can imagine, the pandemic postponed the project," recalls Bonachela.
They chose the topic together: the philosophical concept of change, the ephemeral, the fleeting, something that was suggested to them by the then recent Notre Dame fire, since Bryce was then residing in Paris.
“The piece addressed the juxtaposition of beauty and devastation. And just as he was composing, at the end of 2019, Australia was burning in flames. “That impressed him.” As much as the physicality of those dancers. Ironically, Impermanence was stopped by the pandemic.
A string quartet plays live and there is an electronic part. Dessner believed that the piece needed a song and spoke to Anohni (ex Antony and the Johnsons), who gave them the subtle We need another world.
