Juanjo Arqués

The Spanish choreographer Juanjo Arqués describes himself as an artist who blends the language of contemporary dance with influences from new media, mythology, literature, architecture, and sculptural forms. In 2014, he was nominated for the Prize of the Nederlandse Dansdagen Maastricht, and in 2016 for a Golden Mask Award (Russia’s most prestigious theatre prize) for Best Choreography and Best Choreographer, for his ballet Minos. In 2017, the German magazine tanz named him “most promising choreographer” for his creation Homo Ludens. His choreography Ignite earned Arqués a nomination in 2019 for the prestigious Benois de la Danse.

Arqués danced with Víctor Ullate Ballet in Spain and English National Ballet before joining Dutch National Ballet in 2004, where he was promoted to second soloist three years later. As a dancer, he stood out in works by Hans van Manen, David Dawson, William Forsythe, Alexei Ratmansky, and Christopher Wheeldon. In 2012, Arqués ended his dance career to focus fully on choreography. He has created many of his ballets for Dutch National Ballet, including Consequence (2012), Roulette (2013), Rewind (2014), Homo Ludens (2017), Ignite (2018, in co-production with Birmingham Royal Ballet), Manoeuvre (2020), Biomimicry (2020), and Full Frontal (2023). From 2017 to 2021, he was also affiliated with the company as Young Creative Associate. For the Junior Company, he created Blink (2015), Fresas (2016), and Fingers in the Air (2018). He also choreographed two productions for Dutch National Opera: Joseph Haydn’s Missa in Tempore Belli (2021) and Antonín Dvořák’s Rusalka (2023).

In recent years, Arqués has also created works for several international ballet companies and festivals, including Birmingham Royal Ballet, Ballet Moscow, Compañía Nacional de Danza (Spain), NRW Juniorballett Dortmund, Ballett am Rhein, Junior Ballet Antwerp, and Acosta Danza (Cuba), as well as for the New York Choreographic Institute. He additionally contributed to the staging of the theatre production Vaslav, based on Arthur Japin’s novel of the same name, and to Performing Gender, a dance project on identity and sexual orientation at the Mambo Museum in Bologna (both in 2014). In 2016, he created the choreography for a video installation for the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris.

Season 2025/2026
September 2025 Dutch National Ballet dances IN FLUX, a new choreography by Juanjo Arqués in the programme Monument