Ballet
Nacional Chileno

Founded in Santiago in 1945, the Chilean National Ballet (BANCh), dependent on the Center for Cultural and Artistic Extension of the University of Chile (CEAC), is the first professional contemporary dance company in the country. Throughout its history, it has presented more than 200 works by national and foreign choreographers.

Its beginnings arise in 1940, with the visit to Chile of Kurt Jooss, a great innovator of dance in Germany, who arrived in this South American country with a group of experienced dancers, including Ernst Uthoff, Lola Botka and Rudolf Pescht, who received from the Institute of Musical Extension of the University of Chile the proposal to found a dance school.

The artists accepted the challenge and on October 7, 1941 the school was founded with Ernst Uthoff in the triple role of director, choreographer and teacher, together with the teachers Lola Botka and Rudolf Pescht, as well as the best national talents.

Then came the creation of a Corps de Ballet. Andrée Haas was hired as a Rhythmic teacher and successful productions such as Coppelia by Leo Delibes, premiered in 1945, in a plot and choreographic adaptation by Ernst Uthoff, a work that consolidated the birth of the Chilean National Ballet, BANCh, were made.

The important work carried out during 26 years in the direction of the Chilean National Ballet in the country by the maestro Ernst Uthoff, was recognized nationally and internationally, being distinguished with the National Art Award in 1984.

The following continued to direct BANCH: Charles Dickson, Denis Carey, Virginia Roncal, Patricio Bunster, Nora Arriagada, Maritza Parada, Edgardo Hartley and Gigi Caciuleanu. Currently, the company is directed by the French choreographer Mathieu Guilhaumon.

Born in Perpignan, France, he trained at the National Dance Conservatory in his hometown, at the Alvin Ailey North American Dance Center in New York, and at the Rudra Béjart School in Lausanne. As a professional, he successively joined Group 13, founded by Maurice Béjart, the Bern Ballet Stadttheater, the Augsburg Ballet Theater and the Rhine National Opera Ballet, where he performed notably in choreographies by William Forsythe, Jira Kylián, Emmanuel Gat , Johan Inger, Jacopo Godani, Lucinda Childs, and Garry Stewart.

Parallel to his career as a dancer, Mathieu Guilhaumon has created numerous works for the Bern Ballet and the Rhine Ballet since 2002, and has choreographed opera productions in France and Switzerland. In 2013 he was in charge of the choreography for the opera Hänsel and Gretel, directed by Mariame Clément at the Paris Opera, and created the ballet Peer Gynt for the Rhine Ballet.

In 2014 he became artistic director of the Chilean National Ballet, creating works for the company such as Añañucas, La Hora Azul, Alicia, Cuéntame la Danza, Tengo Más de Mil Años de Recuerdos and War Requiem by Benjamin Britten, the latter presented in 2015 with occasion of the 70th anniversary of the company. Along with this, he has promoted a meeting point on stage between dancers from BANCh and the Santiago Ballet in his works Cuarteto, Dos Veces Bach and Noces. In February 2016, he participated for the first time at the Royal Opera House in London, where he was in charge of the choreographic creation of the work L’Étoile.

It seeks to pay tribute to the classical repertoire, always with a conceptual and aesthetic proposal that follows the artistic line of BANCh. Thus, it includes the music from Act 4 of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, and an excerpt from Giselle’s version created especially for BANCh.

As the guiding thread of these two pieces, the central character, alone and locked in his dressing room, recalls these fragments of classic works and begins a journey through this imaginary.

Choreography: Mathieu Guilhaumon
Music: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky / Adolph Adam
Lighting design: Yury Canales
Costume design: Carolina Vergara

Distribution
Facundo Bustamante, Nicolás Berrueta, Gema Contreras, David Correa, Isidora Dubó, Marine Garcia, Andrés Herrera, Fabián Leguizamón, Carla Loustaunau, Gabriel Nilo, Sofía Passarelli, Amaru Piñones, Gabriela Suazo, Delfina Torres, Morvan Teixeira and Vanesa Turelli.

Composed for the Russian ballerina Ida Rubinstein, a friend and patron of Maurice Ravel, this “ballet of a Spanish character” was created by the Rubinstein company at the Paris Opera on November 22, 1928, with choreography by Bronislava Nijinska.

The plot located the action in an Andalusian tavern where, dancing on a table, a gypsy caused the sensual intoxication of a male assembly. Departing from the original narrative and modeled after a correspondence between musical composition and choreographic composition, five and then six dancers submit to Ravel’s obsessive musical motif until their bodies are mesmerized by movement.

A choreographic phrase gradually builds, develops, repeats itself, the movements progressively building up and then changing and distorting to reveal new bodily and spatial forms in a general crescendo.

Choreography: Mathieu Guilhaumon
Music: Maurice Ravel
Lighting design: Andrés Poirot
Costume design: Carolina Vergara

Distribution
Facundo Bustamante, Nicolás Berrueta, Gema Contreras, David Correa, Marine Garcia, Andrés Herrera, Fabián Leguizamón, Carla Loustaunau, Amaru Piñones, Gabriela Suazo, Morvan Teixeira and Vanesa Turelli.