Repertoire

Cobalto

Nacho Duato

Cobalto is a reflection on erotism. Duato approaches the subject from an oneiric point of view, submerging himself in the world of erotic dreams. The piece is created for ten dancers. Once more, Duato grants the music a primordial importance in his creations and, in Cobalto, he again resorts to his usual composers, Pedro Alcalde and Sergio Caballero.

  • World premiere by Compañía Nacional de Danza: at Teatro de la Zarzuela, Madrid (Spain), March 20th 2009
COBALTO-PORTADA

Cobalto is a piece composed for a single instrument, the organ.The music was recorded at the church of Collbató on a Blancafort organ, by the organ player Juan de la Rubia.

Duato also has the lighting designer Brad Fields on his artistic team. He is the lighting director of the American Ballet Theater and a faithful collaborator in all his premieres for years. Another striking fist is the costume design by Lydia Delgado a fashion designer.

“It is like a colour (blue) an energy, but it belongs to the negative side and in its supreme purity it is, as one would say, a precious nothingness. Its effect is a mixture of excitation and serenity.”

Goethe. “Theory of colours.”

Blue is holy and pornographic, prudish and obscene. It is used in the English expression “blues”, understood as sad, but it is also like “verde”, green in Spanish, means erotic or obscene. Cobalt blue is the maximum example of that bipolarity. Beautiful, arrogant and celestial, it conceals its mineral origin known as “flower of cobalt”, a mixture of cobalt arsenide and nickel that form a crystal on contact with the air. Toxic and poisonous due to its arsenic, it was christened the elf-blue that tormented miners, with the German name by which we know it: kobelt. Cobalt blue is, of all the colours, that of the unconscious history.

Información

  • Choreography:
    Nacho Duato
  • Music:
    Pedro Alcalde / Sergio Caballero (organist: Juan de la Rubia; church of Collbató on a Blancafort organ)
  • Set Design:
    Nacho Duato
  • Costume Design:
    Lydia Delgado
  • Lighting Design:
    Brad Fields
  • Set made by:
    CND workshop
  • Costumes made by:
    CND wardrobe
  • Props:
    Mambo decorados
  • Running time:
    29 minutes
  • Premiere cast:
    Tamako Akiyama, Dimo Kirilov, Clifford Williams, Clyde Archer, Gentian Doda, Francisco Lorenzo, Ana María López, Yolanda Martín, Luisa María Arias, Ana Tereza Gonzaga