«What can improve dance? The figures support me: the National Auditorium has seven times the budget of the National Dance Company (CND). In Spain there are 100 public orchestras and only two dance companies. In Germany, there are more than 60 dance companies, each with its theater. We do not have ours. The annual budget of the CND (1.7 million euros) is what the New York City Ballet spends in one season on pointe shoes ... ». In this graphic way Joaquín de Luz (Madrid, 1976) recounts how precarious the situation of the only state company in Spain dedicated to classical dance is, in which his direction has begun.

The presentation of the performances that the CND offers at the Teatro de La Zarzuela from December 10 to 22, The Nutcracker, by José Carlos Martínez, on the original of Petipa and Tchaikovsky, serves its director to raise his voice: «No There is cultural policy in this country and the dance is battered . The dance situation in Spain would change if someone who danced sat on the Council of Ministers. A Tamara Rojo, a Nacho Duato ... ».

"I think," he continues, "that in these months of failed investiture I have not heard the word culture even once." «If we have a government, I hope everything changes and for the better, for the dance. I come from the US and there 90% of a company's budget is private. Here, you can't start the patronage conversation. I have patrons who want to contribute, but not that their money goes to the Treasury without going through the company ».

And having said that, the former New York City Ballet star, National Dance Award 2016 and fixed in New York for two decades insists: «The creation of INAEM seems to me a nonsense. It is a dysfunctional system for dance. It is as if you are going to buy the bread, you have the baker in front, but a person appears in the middle. It is not clear what it is for. Why can't the Ministry of Culture manage companies and theaters without a closed shell like INAEM?

Before, in appearance before the press, Joaquin de Luz, said that when he said he wanted to return to Spain he was called crazy ... "They were right," he adds. The now director insists on how difficult it is to get a proper form of work for dance: «The unions, when they heard that I said that the dancer cannot work as an official, turned on the red light. They looked at me a little like this one ... » .

"But I'm right," he continues. «The agreement and the system that govern the CND are wrong. Here the ballet class is included in the working day and is not so in the United States. Therefore, we only have three and a half hours to rehearse. And, by contract, if I want to bring a Balanchine ballet they force me to five hours a day of rehearsal. O The consecration of spring , by Pina Bausch, has to be six hours and with six teachers in different rooms. And we only have two ... ».

"I don't blame the unions or the INAEM, but I'm going to give them both a taste," he says while on the stage of La Zarzuela the technicians place the ballet scenery represented by classical companies around the world for Christmas and that "here we are not going to do every year, because to do so it is essential and essential to have our own theater."

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