Juan Ignacio (Nacho) Duato, born in Valencia and resident in Madrid, choreographer and Dance Director, he trained as a dancer at the Rambert School in London and, after Maurice Béjart’s Mudra School in Brussels and Alvin Ailey’s American Dance Center in New York.

His ballets and choreographies are part of the repertoire of the most prestigious international companies, Cullberg Ballet and Nederlands Dans Theater, but also of the American Ballet Theatre, the Paris Opera Ballet, the Berlin Opera Ballet, the Australian Ballet Company , Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, the Stuttgart Ballet, the Lisbon Gulbenkian Ballet, the Finnish Opera Ballet, the San Francisco Ballet or the Royal Ballet itself. He will be artistic director of the National Dance Company from 1990 until July From 2010 he directed the Mikhailovsky Theater ballet in Saint Petersburg until 2013 he directed Serela Derdel Berlin State Ballet Tagesspiegel.

In 1998 he starred in the television series “The virtue of the murderer” where he met Fina Sensada. As a result of this, she made the documentary “Nacho Duato, Notes for a portrait” when at the age of 40 he decided to stop dancing with the Spanish National Dance Company. This is where she discovered her humanistic and cooperative side that she inherited from her maternal grandfather, Dr. Juan José Barcia Goyanes. pioneer of Neurology, Psychiatry and Neurosurgery in Spain, Dean and Rector in Valencia, writer and humanist.

Years later, Nacho actively participated in the field, in awareness-raising work, together with Chema Caballero, in Sierra Leone with children with hands and feet amputated by the rebels. He currently participates in Valencia with dance workshops for the disabled.

The hands of a good surgeon dance between nerves and tendons. Nacho’s feet and hands dance to fight for a fairer world and thus help to put children on their feet. He represents the importance of having hands and feet. Without feet there is no movement, without hands there is no freedom.

Nacho is in the creative department of the Foundation, in charge of uniting Medicine and Art.