Tim Meara © 29/4/2003 News... Rafael Bonachela to be New Associate Choreographer For Rambert Bonachela (dancer) in reviews 'Three left Standing' reviews 'Linear Remains' reviews Rambert Reviews Catherine Hale reviews

British stoicism hasn’t made much impact on Rafael Bonachela since he came here from his native Spain. He’s not one to wait in line for opportunity to beckon, at least where choreography is concerned. After eleven years with Rambert, he’s now one of the company’s flagship home-grown choreographers, with “21”, his biggest work to date, coming to Sadlers Wells in May. But, as he told me during its rehearsal break, success hasn’t fallen into his lap.

True, he was given the chance to put together some steps in Rambert’s annual choreographic workshops. Christopher Bruce, new as artistic director at the time, had just reinstituted the event and Bonachela had just found his feet in the company. So he volunteered. The resulting work, “Four Gone, Three Left Standing”, was boldly plucked out by Bruce and programmed at Sadlers Wells in 1999. “Like: HELLO?” (Gesticulations of incredulity from Bonachela here.) “I was petrified. My experience was minimal. But it gave me that special thing of someone believing in you.”

“But, from that point I don’t think I’ve ever had a week when I haven’t been choreographing. And it was never because someone asked me to.” His first taste of success made Bonachela hungry, and he set up camp in Rambert’s downstairs studio, twisting other dancers’ arms during their lunch breaks (maybe literally given his quirky, angular style) to help him pursue a passion that had begun, as a schoolboy, in the pueblo streets of La Garriga, with just a 1970’s stereo, Spanish pop songs, a gaggle of obliging little girls and inspiration from the silver screen. (There were no videos then, he recalls. “You couldn’t keep rewinding and memorise the dance steps. You had to make them up yourself”).

And soon enough people did ask him. In the last three years there has been a commission with English Chamber Orchestra and collaborations in films by director Livia Russell and artist Tim Meara. And, most flamboyantly, there has been “Fever”, Kylie Minogue’s 2002 world tour, for which he was asked to make the dance material.

The story of how he got an email one day offering him this unlikeliest of jobs is a typical chapter in the life of Bonachela: Forger of His Destiny. It started after the annual choreographic workshop two years ago:

“It was in May, a period before the holidays when Christopher Bruce was making a work that I wasn’t involved in, and I said ‘Look, it’s three weeks before holidays; I’ve just finished this work and I feel like I really need to carry on, right now. After all, we’re supposed to be encouraging people here and I’m supposed to be learning.’

‘I don’t need a commission; I just don’t want it to be six months before I start getting my teeth into this piece again”. I said, “Do you mind if I go downstairs with some of your cover cast and start working on something?’ and he said , ‘Sure.’ Three weeks later I went to him and said, ‘Christopher, I’ve got a piece. If you’re interested and you like it, you have it’.”

That piece was “Linear Remains”. It hadn’t been announced and no budget had been allocated for staging it. But it was squeezed in at the last minute at Sadlers Wells in November 2001. And in the audience was one William Baker, creative director for Ms Minogue with an eye on the avant garde. It was he who invited Bonachela into the high temple of pop, with a commission to choreograph for “Fever”.

Kylie, the original-and-best Neighbour with an image more malleable than Michael Jackson’s face, is the ultimate package of prefabricated dreams. Bonachela’s work is stark, sober and razor-edged and refuses to peddle easy emotion or spin any tale. But every now and then the strict line that divides commercial entertainment from high-minded art goes full circle and the opposites meet. So it happened as Bonachela suddenly found himself choreographing dances to songs like “Love At First Sight.”

But Baker wanted abstract, futuristic movement rather than the pop concert’s usual pantomimic grinding. And Bonachela, big-hearted and utterly unpretentious as he is, rolled up his sleeves and got on with the job in all modesty. He was allowed to select his own dancers – from among Rambert and ENB - and went on choreographing in his usual formalist style, ignoring the themes in the lyrics. “The show was really off-the-wall. William took big risks with the design. The dancers wore silver all-in-ones, headdresses and these codpieces on top of their trousers like in The Clockwork Orange.”

“It was a nice change to be directed, to have to adapt myself to a script”, he reflects. “I think I have gained a lot from having to create under a tight schedule. Above all I’ve grown so much, personally. This was the first time someone from the outside believed in me and gave me such a responsibility. Until then I had just been a Rambert dancer for years, choreographing in my spare time.”

Becoming “just” a Rambert dancer, as Bonachela puts it, is another tale of precocious talent and extraordinary achievement. As a young village lad he first set foot in a dance class at the age of 16 when his father got so fed up with him boogying in the streets and embarrassing him in front of the neighbours that he packed him onto a train to Barcelona – a 40 minute ride away – to get some real training after school. A year or so later he was snapped up by the Lanomina Imperial contemporary dance company. “In the audition I had to improvise and act. I had no life experience to offer but they took me because I could just MOVE”. Still, only after he gained his high school certificate did Bonachela Snr allow his son to come to London on a scholarship to the London Studio Centre. From there he had a job with Rambert before he was 21.

And now that he’s coming up to 31, and the “Fever” has died down, so to speak, he has his first fully-fledged commission for the company, a full budget, 14 dancers and a specially commissioned score by Benjamin Wallfisch. The 3 minute snapshot I caught of “21” in rehearsal was beautiful: a trio of women interlocking and unravelling with a pulsating drive; an arpeggio of limbs unfolding in succession. But it’s the film element of “21” which is getting it publicity at the moment because it is made by the team of “Fever”. The team is Baker, of the outré designs, Alan MacDonald, a filmmaker netted in by Baker, whose work Bonachela adores, and La Minogue herself, star of the film.

an image of 21, featuring Kylie Minogue's eye projected onto two Rambert dancers
Photograph by Chriish Nash ©

What’s more, “21” involves a special surprise. It’s not in the PR package but Bonachela blabbed it out to me in his enthusiasm, and then graciously allowed me to divulge it. It has nothing to do with the celebrated derriere. No, Kylie has written a poem especially for the piece which has been incorporated into the score! “I asked Kylie to be part of this work because I thought she was an amazing, unique performer, and a lovely person”, he explains, “but I wanted her to be involved in a way that would be interesting to her, as well as different from what she does everyday. William and I thought of the film as an exploration of celebrity. Kylie exists in the piece as an icon, a projection. But I kept sending her the music and asking her to come up with something that was her own - that wasn’t what I, or anyone else, was saying about her. At first she was dubious. But she came to the recording day with a poem that she’d written the day before. It’s a beautiful poem about celebrity, about love and about her life experience, which only she knows. It was very special for me because that was one of our concepts: with celebrities we think we know them but we don’t.”

For Bonachela there is no contrast between his Spartan, anti-narrative choreography and the theme of celebrity in the film. “I’ve used what people know Kylie for, which is her image and her voice, and I’ve put them in a totally abstract context. We found our reason to make this piece and I hope people get their own ideas from watching it. I think the problem with dance is the more you say the more you spoil it.”

So what can we say about Bonachela’s energetic, unyielding style without spoiling it? He offers, “I like to see women as strong and powerful, not weak, fragile, mincing around. Take Amy [Hollingsworth, Rambert dancer] – no matter how skinny and blonde and blue-eyed she looks, she’s got real strength, and I want to push that in my choreography. My work has a sense of manipulation and people are sometimes left in very awkward positions. But then there are moments of gentleness, of embrace.”

Rafael Bonachela
Photograph by Tim Meara ©

“I enjoy being challenged as a dancer – not in the sense of triple pirouettes, but in the sense of dynamics, stamina, and weight. So that’s also what I like to see in my choreography. I told the dancers ‘I want this to be real - otherwise let’s just not do it. If you fall over, that’s exciting, but let’s not be polite.’”

If that sounds rather draconian, in reality, Bonachela the choreographer keeps his troops in order with softly–spoken sweetness. I put it to him that maybe his veteran status in Rambert (only Glenn Wilkinson has been in the company for longer) gave him this committed respect from younger dancers. “The truth is I got that confidence by doing the Kylie concert. When I was taken away from here and given such a big responsibility, I had to put myself up there in front of the dancers and say it doesn’t matter that maybe we’re friends or maybe the same age. I’ve got to do my best. You learn that only by being firm and saying what you really think are you going to get what you want, which is the best for them anyway.”

“Here you come in and you know everything about the dancers, you know who’s split up with their boyfriend or is in a bad mood.” That, to Bonachela is one of the many advantages of being in a company like Rambert, advantages that he is weighing up as the possibility of going independent presents itself. “I see the dancers every day, in class, working with different people, and I’m always seeing new possibilities in them that I wouldn’t if I only came in to make work as an outsider.”

“Also, while I’m loving to choreograph and feeling more confident, I also feel that I’m dancing the best that I’ve ever danced at the moment. Because when you grow personally in confidence it translates onstage, as a performer”. So, while the future remains open, it seems this Spaniard who couldn’t get there quick enough is in no hurry to leave.