When he was a child, Antonio Najarro, 50, would skate from his home to the Conservatory. His calling was dance, and he pursued it until becoming a leading figure in Spanish dance and flamenco, eventually directing the National Ballet of Spain from 2011 to 2019. He had no idea back then that skating would become another way of shaping and spreading dance. He didn’t even fully grasp it in 2002, when he received his first request to create a choreography for the French Olympic skaters Marina Anissina and Gwendal Peizerat, who had spent some time in Andalusia working with other flamenco creators — apparently without much success. “It seemed very difficult to me. Flamenco is so rooted in the earth that doing it on ice felt almost crazy. But curiosity got the better of me,” he says over the phone to EL PAÍS. “They saw my work and noticed that I had also choreographed for fashion and film, and I imagine that openness to taking dance beyond the stage was what interested them.”

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