Dance star’s ‘intimate gift’ to Sydneysiders

By Nick Galvin

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After a lifetime in dance and 14 years as artistic director of Sydney Dance Company, Rafael Bonachela has never drawn overtly on his Spanish heritage in his choreography. Until now.

Bonachela, 51, who left Spain as a teenager, cannot fully articulate why now feels like the right time to return to his roots for inspiration.

“I have lived 35 years away from Spain,” he says. “It’s a piece I’ve wanted to make for a long time. It feels like the right thing at the right time with the right dancers.”

Rafael Bonachela, with dancers Liam Green, Naiara de Matos and Jesse Scales.Credit: Janie Barrett

To be performed in front of an audience of just 150, at Walsh Bay’s The Nielsen, Somos (“We are”) is designed to be an up-close experience.

“It’s almost like a gift to audiences here,” says Bonachela. “Something really intimate.”

Bonachela’s relationship with his Spanish heritage is complex. Born in a small town outside Barcelona, he was just three when the 36-year Franco dictatorship came to an end

“I was born at a time of hope and of change and that change happened very, very quickly,” he says.

Earlier, his parents had moved north from the southern town of Almeria in search of work. Bonachela’s father brought with him his passion for Andalusian culture, in particular Flamenco, but young Rafael would have none of it.

“Flamenco was not cool in the north,” he says. “What I remember very clearly growing up in the 80s was the pop music. Madonna and Michael Jackson. I remember watching that video of Thriller on TV and Olivia Newton John and John Travolta in those movies that would come on around Christmas.”

Bonachela says much of his adult life has been a process of falling in love with his Spanish heritage. Credit: Berlinda Rolland

From the youngest age, Bonachela was always “moving and dancing”. His parents were supportive of, if slightly bemused by, their dance-crazy eldest son.

“They didn’t stop me at all,” he says. “My mum bought me a yellow tracksuit, terry towelling, and leg warmers of rainbow, which did not mean what it means now. When we had a break in school I would have a boombox with a cassette and me and the girls and a couple of other boys that were my friends would make a dance.”

However, other boys in town were less tolerant of Bonachela’s obsession with dance.

“There was a lot of bullying,” he says. “Sometimes they would run after me. Throw stones at me. There was a moment of being a bit terrorised but no one ever managed to beat it out of me. I loved singing and dancing.”

After a chance meeting with a professional ballet dancer, Bonachela became aware a career could be made from dancing. He took his passion to London, embarking on a glittering career in dance that ultimately led him to Sydney and the Sydney Dance Company.

Meanwhile, his parents had split and he lost touch with his father. The two didn’t speak in the years leading up to his father’s death in the early 2000s.

“That’s very sad, actually, because I always knew, because other people told me, that my father was very proud of me,” he says. “But the tough life that he had didn’t allow him to really express things. He always wanted me to be tough. He was always proud of what I did, but was never able to tell me. But I had to sort of fight that and also had to find my own way. I don’t even know if he knew I was gay because by that point the relationship had been fractured so much.”

Bonachela says that once he left Spain he was anxious to leave behind his culture and fit into his new world. However, since then it has been a long process of “bit by bit falling in love with my own culture as a Spaniard”.

And the crowning moment in that process to date will be the Flamenco influenced Somos, which features 12 songs in Spanish, all by female vocalists, including two from legendary Mexican singer Chavela Vargas.

“There’s something beautiful about the Spanish spirit that I’ve been deprived of for so long,” he says. “I am a universal human being who has been living around the world, but I’m also Spanish – apart from the fact that I’m always on time, which is the most unSpanish thing.”

The Nielsen, Walsh Bay, November 1 – 18

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