Style Meets Substance Annabelle Lopez Ochoa blends energy with emotion BY LAURA KUMIN in her choreography. It’s 3:00 in the afternoon in Madrid and the air in the rehearsal studio of Spain’s Compañía Nacional de Danza is dense With more than 30 works completed of dance theater aesthetic.” Their season with concentration. Sixteen dancers are since her acclaimed duet Before After at the Joyce includes Lopez Ochoa’s rehearsing Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s In for the Dutch National Ballet in 2002, sexy, leggy duet, Locked Up Laura; her Transit, in preparation for its January Lopez Ochoa is in demand worldwide. zany satire, Mad’moiselle; and Nube premiere. The dance is filled with rapid She has been commissioned by large Blanco, the first piece in which she ex- crossings, encounters, and occasional companies like Pacific Northwest Ballet, plored her Latina heritage. (Her father is collisions. One lone woman sits quietly Pennsylvania Ballet, the Scapino Ballet, Colombian and her mother Belgian.) on a bench center stage, observing the and the Royal Ballet of Flanders. She American Ballet Theatre star Daniil nonstop commotion around her. When is equally at home with smaller groups Simkin, a regular on the international the others exit she begins a legato, emo- such as Chicago’s Luna Negra Dance gala circuit, asked Lopez Ochoa if he tional solo resonant of the isolation of Theater, Seattle’s Whim W’Him, and could perform her La Pluie, which he’d the individual in the midst of a crowd. Philadelphia’s BalletX, in addition to her seen on YouTube. “There’s a certain There is no obvious narrative in Lo- full-length projects with theater-dance sensuality and a certain serenity in the pez Ochoa’s work, but one of her trade- collective De Fantasten in Holland, choreography,” says Simkin. “Her style marks is the ability to suggest powerful where she has lived for the past 18 years. I would call more European. It’s classical emotions through “abstract” move- This month Ballet Hispanico will but contemporary. There’s a freedom to ment. This strength has taken her from perform three of her pieces in their New the movement.” About the working pro- company to company, from Rotterdam York City season. “I love her work,” cess he says, “She has a lot of energy in Courtesy Lopez Ochoa. Opposite page: Matthew Karas This page: Alexander Iziliaev, to Seattle. At 38 the prolific Belgian- says artistic director Eduardo Vilaro. the studio and you can kind of bounce Colombian choreographer is making a “The sense of humor it brings to dark off each other if the chemistry is right.” vital impact on contemporary ballet. topics is refreshing.” He says his dancers He appreciates the feedback he gets Trained at the Royal Ballet School “adore working with her. She brings from her. “She is very positive, but at of Antwerp, Lopez Ochoa’s 12 years as something out in them which is a kind the same time she sees what is good and a performer included 7 as a soloist with what is bad. She has a good eye. She also Rotterdam’s Scapino Ballet. She had her knows you cannot expect everything first experience composing dances at 11 immediately, so she’s very patient. She and spent the rest of her student years accepts change, she accepts suggestion. on the lookout for available studio space Work is very important to her; we’re on in which to keep exploring. In 2003 the same wavelength.” she embarked on a career as a freelance choreographer and hasn’t stopped since. Left: Castrati, “When I’m working with the dancers I performed by BalletX try to get in touch with that 11-year-old state of mind where you create your own rules.” 24 APRIL 2 0 1 2 * AS SEEN IN DANCE MAGAZINE. UNAUTHORIZED DUPLICATION IS PROHIBITED. “I love to choreograph chaos and find patterns within.” DANCE MAGAZINE 25 * AS SEEN IN DANCE MAGAZINE. UNAUTHORIZED DUPLICATION IS PROHIBITED. Above: Ballet Hispanico in Lopez Ochoa’s satiric Mad’moiselle, to be performed at the Joyce this month. Reminiscing about her early work, the choreographer says: “My first pieces were very simple duets that I presented at the annual Scapino Ballet workshop. They were so different from what the other dancers were doing that they seemed odd and childish to me.” She credits the director Ed Wubbe for en- couraging her. “He is so good to young choreographers. He saw that I was pas- sionate and had talent, and gave me my first opportunity to make a 10-minute duet on a big stage, with real dancers, rehearsal time, costumes, and lighting. I hope one day I can provide this kind of support to young dancemakers.” Coming back to the current work, a ticket,” recounts the choreographer. The piece takes advantage of the she says, “In Transit is inspired by “She was alone and desolate. I was close CND dancers’ mastery of the fluid, airports because I’m always traveling. enough to hear that she wasn’t going to grounded, contemporary ballet vo- There are thousands of planes taking off be allowed into the U.S. I imagined her cabulary that was a company trademark and landing at Schiphol airport. How arriving, full of hope, and I wondered during Nacho Duato’s 20 years at the helm. But, whereas Duato’s phrases were choreographed closely to the “Young dancers want to be perfect music, Lopez Ochoa leaves more space for the performers to influence what is and that stops them from showing going on. The new director, José Carlos Left: Eduardo Patino, Courtesy BH. Right: Matthew Karas Left: Eduardo their uniqueness.” —Lopez Ochoa Martínez, a former étoile with the Paris Opéra Ballet, is pleased with the work. “The dancers’ energy and power hold do they do it? It’s amazing how chaos what might be awaiting her back home.” your attention throughout the entire can be so well organized!” she laughs. She continues: “We were both in the piece,” he says. “I like the way Anna- “I love to choreograph chaos and find same space at the same time but our expe- belle breaks the group into smaller, more patterns within.” One of the stories in In riences were very different. That was what intimate duets and trios that provide Transit is something she experienced in a made me think, I have to make a piece moments of calm in the midst of such New York airport. “In the waiting area a about all these individuals, coming and go- high-powered action.” woman was crying softly while a customs ing, surrounded by masses of people, but Lopez Ochoa has a great capacity agent and someone from the airline took ultimately alone. During In Transit the for homing in on the dancers’ abilities her passport and gave her papers and dancers interact but they don’t connect.” in all kinds of contexts. “I think it’s 26 APRIL 2 0 1 2 * AS SEEN IN DANCE MAGAZINE. UNAUTHORIZED DUPLICATION IS PROHIBITED. European vs. American Having worked with dancers on both sides of the pond, Lopez Ochoa tells us what differences she’s observed. “I think that in the U.S. most companies don’t have the luxury of an extended creation period. Dancers are trained to pick Rubinald up movements faster, so the Pronk adrenaline curve of a creative and Drew process is steeper than in Europe. Jacoby in This doesn’t mean that the result is One, created necessarily better, simply that the for them vibration is higher in an American dance studio. I think there’s also an awareness among American because I love to adapt. Choreography is for perfection, just generosity. When dancers that their contracts can a constant search. Having a lot of ques- dancers lose themselves in the movement be terminated at the end of each tions and searching for the answers is I feel humbled. I’ve learned that every season, versus their European what makes you creative,” she says. dancer has a jewel and it’s up to me to colleagues, who often enjoy the That search springs up from many fi nd that jewel, polish it and let it shine.” security of more stable contracts. directions. With interests ranging All dancers hate injuries and fi nd from Pergolesi to Rufus Wainwright, Laura Kumin is a writer, presenter, and them frustrating, but American Buddhism to quantum physics, Lo- teacher in Madrid. She directs the Certa- dancers are die-hards and seem pez Ochoa reels off a long list of her men Coreográfi co de Madrid, a national to take them in stride more than infl uences: “the freedom of jazz music, platform for contemporary dance. dancers in European companies.” the sharpness of hip hop moves, the visionary dance theater of Pina Bausch, Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De For Lopez Ochoa, Keersmaeker’s eye for detail, video artist her red shoes are Bill Viola for his take on time, the work like home—and also of fashion designers such as Alexander something of a muse. McQueen, Hussein Chalayan, Viktor & Rolf—not for their fashion state- ments but for how they think out of the box each time. I admire them for that, because with each work I also try to expand my limits!” What does she look for in a dancer? “Young dancers want to be perfect and that stops them from showing their uniqueness,” says the choreographer. “Older dancers are at ease with them- selves. You see beautiful freedom of movement.” She continues, “I never look Top: Amitava Sarkar, Courtesy Jacoby.