Dance with a Spanish flavor: Madrid's most famous contemporary choreographer brings modern dance to a new audience.

Nacho Duato doesn't waste words: "Under Franco, arts and culture in Spain were reduced to bullfights, flamenco, and lots of football games." "Since the choreographer is artistic director of Madrid's Compania Nacional de Danza, football means soccer: only Americans and Canadians think a football has pointy ends.) Duato took over four years ago, becoming the fourth artistic director in the history of a company that wasn't even founded until 1979. That averages out to one director every three and three-quarter years. If there's a Spanish equivalent to "Let it be a challenge to you," the thirty-seven-year-old choreographer must have it memorized.

While in New York City for the company's North American debut--which took place at City Center in May--Duato pointed out that he is fighting history (or a lack of it) and bureaucracy. Although Spain had a strong tradition of dance during the nineteenth century, much of it was lost during the regime of Generalissimo Francisco Franco, who ran the country from 1939 until his death thirty-six years later. (The Generalissimo's attitude toward art may be defined by a single fact: In 1936, the first year of the Spanish Civil War, his soldiers stood Federico Garcia Lorca against a wall and shot him.)

"There was a company at the Royal Theater before the war," Duato says, "but there has not been much classical dance in Spain since then, and we haven't had any classical or modern dance companies before this one was formed."

The Compania Nacional de Danza was inaugurated in 1979 as the Ballet Nacional de Espana Clasico with Victor Ullate, a Spanish dancer who had performed with Maurice Bejart's Ballet of the Twentieth Century, as artistic director. Four years later, the company, its name changed to the Ballets Nacionales--Espanol y Clasico, came under the direction of Maria de Avila, who brought in works by major classical choreographers such as George Balanchine and Antony Tudor, whose ballets were little known in Spain.

In 1987 the troupe changed direction again; the almost legendary Bolshoi ballerina Maya Plisetskaya was put in charge and, not surprisingly, introduced ballets from the Russian classical tradition into the repertoire. Her tenure lasted until 1990, when Duato, then a performer and a resident choreographer with Netherlands Dance Theater, was invited to return to his native country and assume the artistic directorship. He was thirty-three years old.

Spaniards, he remarks, generally know little about classical ballet or American modern dance. European companies sometimes participated in Spanish festivals, but such scattered performances were not enough to educate and build an audience. Therefore, despite his respect for Plisetskaya, Duato thinks that her approach was not well suited to Spain: "A young audience that has never seen ballet," he explains, "shouldn't be confronted, first thing, with the third act of Raymonda."

Instead of trusting to the classical (or even the neoclassical) tradition, Duato drew on the theories and methods of contemporary European ballet; he has also been influenced by American modern dance choreographers. Those are the styles in which he was trained, the emotion-laden, socially conscious work of Mats Ek, Ohad Naharin, Alvin Ailey, and especially Jiri Kylian.

Duato began his ballet training at the Rambert School in London, continued his work at Mudra, Bejart's school in Brussels, and rounded out his education with classes at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center in New York City, where he studied Graham and Horton techniques, among others.

"I love Alvin's work," Duato says. "It's about the essence of things--it's not just fluffy dances. I loved Alvin, too, and I wanted to work with him. I had a contract to join the company, but it took a long time for me to get a green card, and meanwhile I got an offer from Mats Ek to dance with the Cullberg Ballet. Much as I wanted to dance for Alvin, I couldn't afford to wait around wondering when I'd get permission to work in the United States."

In 1981, after a year performing for Ek in Stockholm, Duato received an invitation from Kylian to join Netherlands Dance Theater. The association lasted nearly ten years; Duato became one of the company's resident choreographers in 1988, and he is quick to acknowledge Kylian's influence not only on his work but also on his ideas about molding a company: "NDT is, in a way, a model for what I hope do to in Spain."

While his own dances form the core of the repertoire, Duato has brought in pieces by Ek and William Forsythe; Kylian has given the company his Symphony of Psalms, and Duato would love to acquire works by Paul Taylor, Lar Lubovitch, James Kudelka, and Naharin. "I want a repertory that's mixed," he explains. "I want to invite new choreographers every year and to work up a clear identity for the company. [I must create] pieces that involve a Mediterranean way of seeing life and movement. The south of Europe has a different temperament from the north. I try not to copy anything. Work should be created in a style that arises from a specific culture--you can't transplant a tree and expect it to grow properly."

Mediterranean is a key word in Duato's choreography. "I was born in Valencia," he explains, "and so many cultures came or went through there and left an influence--Greek, Tunisian, West African, Jewish ... it's very earthy."

The focus of his work, he says, is "the body expressing the emotion of the music; my dances are inspired by human relationships and everyday life."

He admits, with no great sign of concern, that "many critics in Spain are against me: they say there is a ballet tradition in the country. But the old classical national company didn't have a single full-length ballet in its repertory. Productions are expensive, so they did only one premiere a year; now we do six or seven. The company takes classical class every day, but if you don't have the dancers and the resources to create a classical company, you shouldn't try to do it--you should aim at something else.

"Maybe the government should open a strictly classical company, too, and a school to train dancers for it."

Creating a repertoire to suit his audience, and building an audience to appreciate his repertoire-however, is only one of Duato's problems. He's also faced with a challenge all too familiar to artistic directors in the United States: the need to raise money and cut expenses.

"We have a very strong dancers' union in Spain," Duato remarks, "with very strict rules. I'm supposed to keep dancers under contract until they're sixty-five years old. In strictly classical companies, there are mime roles for older dancers, but we don't have those full-length ballets. Right now, the company has fifty-two dancers, but I use only thirty-four of them.

"With the older dancers, I have to make them feel that I don't hate them--that it's not their fault--but they just don't fit into the repertory of this kind of company. I'm trying to get the retirement age lowered to forty, and to have the government pay dancers who retire to 'recycle themselves'--to study something else.

"We're slowly changing the union rules, and the old bureaucracy is starting to change--but it's such a slow process. Last year the budget was cut by thirty-five percent because of the recession, and for the first time I had to go out and look for a sponsor. I found Telefonica, which sponsored our tour to North America. The solution would be to find something in between government and private support; the government should subsidize the company but not be the only source of funds."

Next year, when the Royal Opera House in Madrid reopens, the company will move there from its current home in the smaller Teatro de la Zarzuela, a transfer that may add to Duato's difficulties. "We don't have an opera-house repertoire," he admits. "It's more modern. We don't have a school, either--nothing like the Royal Ballet School or the School of American Ballet. The next thing the government should do is to open one; a school is a way of cultivating a philosophy of dance."

After the long drought of the Franco years, Duato remarks, Spain is again becoming open to artistic innovation. "We are becoming part of Europe," he says. "The change began during the 1980s; people who had been in exile began to return, and the arts were encouraged. But change takes time; forty years of total blindness doesn't clear up in one minute."