Compañía Nacional de Danza

The need to express dance in this way is powerfully evident in his ballet Lament. It is his final work as permanent choreographer with the NDT and a turning point in his career. With this ballet Nacho Duato wanted to create an intensely personal piece of work. He began with only a basic idea and let it develop in the studio with a groupof personally-selected dancers.

The ballet is about many things, but the choreographer has been inspired not only by Gorecki’s Symphony of the Sorrowful, but also by images of tormented and oppressed people by Goya and Käthe Kollwitz. In their works these artists portray mankind suffering. A place where such things could occur was the starting point for Walter Nobbe’s stylized stage-set. Nacho Duato evokes dramatic images by means of violent movements. The images are clear as to their emotional charge, but have no precise ‘meaning’ and the ‘roles’ are not fixed: anyone can become a victim, but also a perpetrator. The ballet shows that this happens time and time again. According to the choreographer this cannot really be understood, but it should be contemplated, to be, later, a subject of inner reflection.