Alejandro Cerrudo was born in Madrid, Spain. His professional career includes work with Victor Ullate Ballet, Stuttgart Ballet, Nederlands Dans Theater 2 and Hubbard Street Dance Chicago (HSDC). Cerrudo became HSDC’s first-ever resident choreographer in 2008 and held that position until 2018.
Cerrudo’s body of work has been performed by over 20 professional dance companies around the world. Honors include an award from the Boomerang Fund for Artists (2011) and the Prince Prize for Commissioning Original Work from the Prince Charitable Trusts (2012) for his acclaimed, first evening-length work, One Thousand Pieces. In 2014 he was awarded the USA Donnelley Fellowship by United States Artists. Also, Cerrudo was one of four choreographers invited by New York City Ballet’s Wendy Whelan to create and perform original duets for RestlessCreatures. In 2017 Cerrudo was invited by Daniil Simkin to choreograph a site-specific performance for the Guggenheim Rotunda, a Works & Process Rotunda Project commission, featuring Daniil Simkin and original costumes by Dior. Cerrudo’s Sleeping Beauty, created with Ballet Theater Basel in 2016, was nominated as “Production of the Year” in Switzerland in the “Tanz, Jahrbuch 2016” by the Neue Zürcher Zeitung.
In 2020 Cerrudo was appointed Pacific Northwest Ballet’s resident choreographer, with that, he became the first artist in the company’s history to have the honor of holding that title. Independently, he directed and choreographed his show, “It Starts Now,” which premiered in 2020 at The Joyce Theater in New York. In 2022, Cerrudo was appointed artistic director of Charlotte Ballet.
Press Quotes
“If life were kind, I would spend the remainder of this year watching Noelani Pantastico and Lucien Postlewaite’s pas de deux from Alejandro Cerrudo’s glorious “Silent Ghost” on endless loop.”
“One Thousand Pieces" is creamy, flowing, seamless and remarkably free of tension and conflict--typical tools of the art. It's a fast-moving, rarely pausing onslaught of silky, gorgeous, often classically pure dance, dotted with bits of its choreographer's persona.”
“Inventive and rapturously beautiful..., wholly absorbing and emotionally compelling... a dazzling evening at the dance.”
“The holiness of the human body in motion flooded my throat and eyes. I felt I had seen a perfect dance: every movement absolutely necessary, fully embodied and perfectly formed as a grey pearl. Exhaling threatened the moment.”
“What happens when Alejandro Cerrudo is given two dozen dancers and 90 minutes? A pure, fluid and eye-poppingly brilliant testament to what modern dance can do. Congratulations, Mr. Cerrudo. You have crossed the line from genius to legend.”
“Whimsy is juxtaposed with fierce intelligence and an elemental flirt of humor lifts up romanticism. It was a special journey and a sensory extravaganza.”
“There’s more to Cerrudo’s unique vision than meets the eye. One of his essential gifts, imperceptible to his audiences, is the intricate and profound way that he sees music. Alejandro Cerrudo designs movement that looks the way music sounds; he makes Dance that looks like music you can see.”
“His work is exquisite, at turns deeply cerebral, vividly visceral, funny and tactile in the extreme.”
“After watching contemporary dance for 30 years, it’s blissful to be surprised: to recognize new possibilities for how a head can bear weight, to giggle with delight at a perch or position, to understand and see, as if for the first time, the negative space between a torso and an arm.”
“Alejandro Cerrudo’s work has been given accolades for its rare dynamism and fluidity. Rightly so, I would venture, for there was an energy level at work here that shook up the house.”
- Backtrack: new Sleeping Beauty in Basel
“What I couldnʼt anticipate was the stunning impact of this all-Cerrudo program, not only because of the brilliance and range of this young choreographerʼs opus, but because of his careful cultivation of a program whose elements combined so organically that the whole became even greater than the sum of its delectable parts.”