Juan Ignacio Duato Bàrcia, better known as Nacho Duato, has become a viral phenomenon by publishing videos with unfiltered opinions on politics, mainly, and other matters on his Instagram account. His 100,000 followers multiply the views every time he plays them. However, the audience that packed the Paraninfo de La Nau of the Universitat de València this Friday afternoon to attend the presentation of the choreographer and former dancer's memoir, Habla como un hombre, seemed to have known him long before the advent of social networks.
Family, friends, former dancers and ballet teachers burst into applause when the director of the National Dance Company for 20 years entered the room accompanied by his childhood friend and poet Lupe Bohorques, author of the book based on long conversations with the 69-year-old Valencian artist, and the editor Julián Lacalle, from the independent label Pepitas de Calabaza.
Planeta had already offered to publish a biography. It was, according to Duato, a project “with a lot of gossip and that,” but he rejected the proposal because the publisher had chosen “a man he didn't know anything about” to write it.
Throughout the conversation, the choreographer has woven together anecdotes, memories and reflections, often with a hint of humor. On more than one occasion she has interrupted her story to ask her friend if she was already talking too much or has supported her words by moving her arms and hands.
The book narrates episodes of all kinds of his life with the intimacy and trust that comes with talking to someone you have known since childhood and with whom you share a vision of life, in addition to a love of poetry.
“Is it true that you left a boyfriend because he was watching a Torrente film?” asked the director of the La Nau Literature Classroom and professor of Philosophy of Law, Cristina García Pascual, who served as interviewer. "Yes. Torrente can't be... And we had very good sex. I didn't know how to explain it and you all know him. Well, I don't want to go overboard, but I overdo it. I was reading a poem by Rilke and he was watching Torrente," commented the choreographer, causing laughter from the audience.
Years in Russia
Fifteen years of his professional career have passed in Russia, a country of which he has fond memories for its people, “very temperamental, very friends of their friends,” and above all for their esteem for dance, a hobby even more widespread than football, according to Bohorques.
The questions have not been about politics, so they have not touched on one of the issues that has earned him great popularity in recent years: his criticism of the Madrid president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso.
There have only been a few moments in which Duato has adopted a more serious tone: when remembering the death of his sister Carmiña due to drugs, his collaboration with the victims of the dana that caused 234 deaths in Valencia in 2024 or the realization that "when you get older you realize that material things are useless" and that you have to give all possible love to others because "everything else is vanity."
"Those who want to put us all in the closet are coming back again."
A long queue formed at the end of the event so that Duato could sign and dedicate copies. In the morning he had held a meeting with the media, where he had referred to current political issues. “The idea of wanting to put us all in the closet is coming back again,” he said in statements reported by Europa Press.
Regarding the title of the book, which alludes to a phrase that his father repeated to him and refers directly to the mandates on masculinity, he has pointed out that certain elements of that culture contrary to the “pen” still persist, although “at that time it was more complicated.” “They told you: 'Talk like a man' not to say 'Don't be a faggot,'” he said.
“I'm a dancer and I was the only boy in the class. There were no stores to buy boy's sneakers or a jockstrap to wear under tights; "You had to do it yourself," he recalled.
Duato explained that he himself “noticed that it bothered him that he was very sensitive.” "More or less I would sneak in, but if I become trans or something like that, they hang on me. It was something typical of the time I lived in. I don't blame my parents or my family or anyone. In fact, they have loved me a lot and treated me well," he pointed out.
The dancer has also referred to the abuse by a known man that he recounts in the book. "When in Madrid they abused me, they hit me and so on... there are people who say: 'Why didn't you go and report it to the police?' Do you think that in the seventies, as an 18-year-old boy, you were going to go to the police to say that 'an actor wanted to fuck me and hit me'? They put you directly in the cell. They laughed at you, they kicked you. You couldn't say it at that time, you had to keep quiet. "I didn't tell anyone because on top of that it seemed to me that it was my fault," he lamented.
In his opinion, “now those who want to put us all in the closet are returning again,” after having managed to make, for example, the world of dance today “different.” “It's wonderful because the dancers come with their parents or their boyfriend at 17 or 18 years old,” he highlighted.
Other difficult moments from the beginning of his career are also recounted in his book. “What happens to me happens to many people,” he stressed. "The difference is that I talk and there are people who don't talk. I talk about Ayuso and I get involved with whoever I want. Have you seen any actor who gets involved so clearly? Because Javier Bardem says that there is a genocide in Gaza as if it were big news. We already know it, but now get involved with the Zionists that we have in Puerta del Sol. I think that Willy Toledo and I are the only ones," he commented.
On the one hand, I want the right to win because it's going to be a lot of fun. "I don't think it will take more than a year for us to be on the streets daily again."
Regarding the beginning of the electoral campaign and his reflections on the process, he said: “The truth is that I don't feel like voting, because look at how the left is. Look Podemos. Montero has fallen at my feet and so has Rufián. I've already said it: I'm going to vote for Bildu because I love Óscar Matute," he commented, before saying that "he speaks phenomenally" and admitting that he "likes to provoke."
Furthermore, he joked with laughter: “On the one hand, I want the right to win because it's going to be a lot of fun. "I don't think it will take more than a year for us to be on the streets daily again."
