Overview
Picasso crossed Spain to Barcelona as a young man, before settling in to paint in France. To accompany the artist's Sydney show, the Art Gallery of NSW's series of celebrity talks brings dancer Rafael Bonachela to explain how the same two countries have influenced his work.
With a gentle Spanish accent and a yen for making dance easy to enjoy, Bonachela has been reworking the Sydney dance scene since 2008, when he took up the directorship of the Sydney Dance Company.
Bonachela's time with the company has seen it move from its blue period to more vivid and abstract movements. Having moved himself as a young man to Barcelona, where the new environment threw him into a world of dance and a more cosmopolitan life, he knows the strength of a locale's influence in the creative process. A spoken topography that might lead to another lingering look at Paris in the subsequent screening of Jean Cocteau's Orphée in the Gallery theatre. And while Bonachela may dance with an economy of movement, with his words he's generous to a fault.
Orphée is free, but you may need to pick up tickets in advance from the Info Desk. Image by the Sydney Dance Company.