Companhia Nacional de Bailado / George Balanchine + Yannick Boquin + Luís Marrafa

We celebrate the meeting between imagination and technique in soft tones that refer us to the white acts of classical ballets. We celebrate such moments through the diversity of works making up this programme.
Luís Marrafa, a Portuguese choreographer based in Brussels, presents his first choreography for the National Ballet of Portugal.
Yannick Boquin returns to the company no longer as an invited professor, but to choreograph a new piece where the phantasy and ingenuity of ballet are glorified in a pas de deux to the sound of a composition by Shostakovich.
We revisit the gracefulness and intelligence of master George Balanchine’s movement in this programme with his iconic Concerto Barocco, which returns to the stage of Teatro Camões more than 37 years after the company first performed it in 1984.


George Balanchine
Concerto Barocco

Concerto Barocco started as an exercise for the School of American Ballet and was performed by the American Ballet Caravan in its legendary South American tour in 1941. It was later included in the repertoire of the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo, and it was one of the three pieces of the New York City Ballet debut performance in 1948. Balanchine eliminated the original costumes once and for all in 1951, dressing the performers in everyday workout clothes, which was probably the first time one saw what would become Balanchine’s traditional garment for contemporary pieces.
Concerto Barocco is an abstract piece that was developed based on a musical score by Johann Sebastian Bach. The choreography represents an embodiment of the music by the dancers, which is a distinctive feature of the work of American master George Balanchine.  


Yannick Boquin
Shostakovitch Pas de Deux

I’d had the idea of choreographing a pas de deux that was structured based on the classic tradition—adagio, male and female solos, coda—for a long time. By rummaging through the vast and wonderful repertoire of composer Dmitri Shostakovitch, I found the inspiration for my creation. This pas de deux challenges the classical dance technique and its flowing movements bestow an immense joy upon dancing. — Yannick Boquin

Yannick Boquin studied at the Paris National Opera School of Dance and the Paris National Conservatory. He has been a principal dancer in different companies such as Ballet Opera Bonna, Ballet Royal Flanders, Ballet Opera Rome and Ballet Opera Berlin. As a dancer, he was distinguished by different awards throughout his career: first prize at the Paris Conservatory, 1981, Gold Medal at the Houlgate Competition, 1985, Gold Medal at the Paris International Competition, 1987 and the Positano/Leonide Massine Prize, 1995.


Luís Marrafa
Snow

Snow is based on two linked findings: at a time of rampant global overheating, snow is quickly disappearing from our winters, which announces another perhaps less worrying disappearance, that of snowmen, those proto-totems that kept us connected to a certain folk and mythological tradition of the so-called Nordic peoples. This double finding gives rise to a choreographic proposal that coordinates two distinct, yet complementary, perspectives regarding snow as a physical manifestation and social projection.
Thus, while the expression of the molecular form of snow will resonate in the abstract movements of a set of dancers, the gradual transformation of that movement into flowing and more concrete compositions will refer to that other world between phantasy and reality, inhabited by beings whose playful, religious and superstitious roles are confused and diluted. — Luís Marrafa

Luís Marrafa was born in 1975. He graduated from the Escola Superior de Dança, in Lisbon. He is the artistic director of the Marrafa Company dance company in Brussels and of StairCase.studio Brussels, where he is also a curator. He is a choreographer, performer and music composer, intuitively inspired by his experience and the multicultural environment around him. He has been invited by several dance schools and professional companies as a choreographer and dance teacher. He collaborated with artists such as Alain Platel, Rui Horta, Karine Ponties, Tânia Carvalho, Satya Roosens, António Cabrita, Luis Guerra, among others.