Dance guru on living without money and Kylie’s influence

Sydney Dance Company artistic director Rafael Bonachela on growing up in Spain, Catholic guilt, his big break with Kylie and living on baked beans on toast.

Sydney Dance Company artistic director Rafael Bonachela.

When my mum saw Sydney Dance Company perform in Madrid a couple of weeks ago … she couldn’t stop crying because she was so happy and so joyful. She was the one who would drive me to my singing lessons and my dancing lessons – it was quite rare in the 80s for a boy to want to be doing these things. I left Barcelona when I was 18 to become a dancer. In that whole time my family have never really been able to see many openings, especially in the last 15 years since I have lived in Australia. Suddenly I’m in a theatre in Madrid with this packed audience loving the work that we’re making.

Being with someone with such a huge family – partner gastroenterologist Joseph Lawler has 13 siblings – has taught me that … it’s not all about me! They have become my family in so many ways. You can make your family, find your family and your family comes along as you live life.

My relationship with money is … that I do not need loads of it in the bank to be happy but just enough to live freely and do the things I love. I was born under Franco, a dictatorship. There was this struggle to have a better life. My parents worked in factories. I left when I was 18 and my father gave me some money; it wasn’t a lot but he said to me ‘when that ends you have to come back’. I moved to London, found myself a job and went through two years of dancing school while I was working in a theatre. I ate baked beans on toast to save money to have a deposit for a mortgage on a dancer’s wage in London. I’m still doing the thing that I love which is such a privilege.

Not in my life anymore is … Catholic guilt. Spain is of a Catholic country. There is this – and it’s not just Catholicism – but a way that you’re expected to behave in society. Especially as a young gay, human being who has to find himself in the world. You’re constantly reminded that you should not feel like this, you shouldn’t be like this, that those actions are not right. That’s something that takes years to get rid of.

When I told my parents I wanted to be a dancer they said … as long as you finish your high school. It was the first generation in Spain post-Franco that had free public education that was going to make us more than my parents could be. When I had a (dance) scholarship to go to London, then they were like ,“OK, at least you have finished your studies and if this doesn’t work out, you can go to university’’. I was that boy who loved dancing, but for them it was an abstract idea – they didn’t know anyone (doing that).

Choreographing for Kylie Minogue’s world tour early in my career was … life-changing because it came at a time when I needed someone to believe in me. It wasn’t anything I thought was going to happen to me. Like in the movies, I had to pinch myself. As a dancer you are constantly going through tests and rejection. With Kylie the opportunity came when I was thinking about doing choreography, asking “What will I become after being a dancer?” because a dancer’s career ends in their early 30s. Kylie was like, “You’ve got the talent”. I held her hand, she held mine and I grew as a human being and as an artist.

The one thing the world needs right now is … more acceptance, more tolerance more inclusion.

Sydney Dance Company’s Up Close: Somos is showing at the Neilson Studio at Sydney Dance Company, November 1-12.