Performances by Spanish choreographer Nacho Duato will crown the 9th Chekhov International Theatre Festival, this year devoted to the great Russian writer's 150th anniversary.

Nacho Duato has headed the Spanish National Dance Company since 1990. It was he who managed to turn this insignificant troupe into one of the most highly demanded and best paid troupes in the world. This year he returns to Russia for the third time.

For 19 years the name of Nacho Duato has been known worldwide, though he remained unknown in Russia until last summer. Then the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theatre risked staging his early ballet - "Na Floresta." And it was then that the Spanish choreographer agreed to create an original performance especially for this year's anniversary Festival.

Nacho Duato does not like and does not stage performances with a plot and characters. Most of his works, except the ballet "Romeo and Juliette," are abstract musical opuses with unusually sensual choreography. His latest, "Infinite Garden" - a dedication to Chekhov, and "Multiplicity. Forms of Silence and Emptiness" - a dedication to Bach, are to be staged in Moscow and are no exception.

"["Infinite Garden"] is my dedication to Chekhov, a great person and a great artist... [With this work] I wanted to thank him for everything that he created," Nacho Duato says. Duato has done much research preparing this production, he even visited Chekhov's Memorial Estate in Melikhovo where the writer lived and worked.

None of Checkovs works make up the basis of this production - it's again totally abstract and is based on the music by Alfred Schnittke and Pyotr Tchaikovsky.

In "Infinite Garden." Duato pays tribute to the Russian language. Random Russian words and phrases from Chekhovs diaries are heard in the performance accompanying the music. Apart from music and voices, Nacho Duato uses sounds of nature.

A man wearing a suit covered in Russian words appears on stage. The choreographer has underlined that despite what one may think, the character is not Chekhov but a metaphorical image of the text created by the writer.