Premiere at the Mikhailovsky Theatre: 21 March 2012
The ballet Multiplicity. Forms of Silence and Emptiness is one of Nacho Duato’s best-known works. It immediately caught the attention of the critics and brought its creator the prestigious Benois de la Dance prize. The ballet was composed in 1999 for the theatre in Weimar, where Johann Sebastian Bach lived and worked for several years. It is Bach’s music that forms the basis of Duato’s work, in which he tells the story of the great composer’s life and work through the medium of eurhythmic dance. The two-act ballet is a combination of baroque music and modern choreography. It is virtually a biography and, unlike most of Nacho Duato’s ballets, which have no plot, features specific characters — the Composer, the Woman, and Death. The audience accompanies the characters through the main stages of the composer’s life and observes the miraculous creation of the music of a genius.