The animated dance of Diego Agudo Pinilla

Diego Agudo Pinilla (Santander, 49 years old) grew up with a pencil in his hand and a sheet of paper on which to scribble. The idea of ​​drawing as something static did not pass through his mind, but rather he needed an explanation of the previous journey. “As a child I already had it in my head to make sequences. He would see a photo of the soccer goalkeeper Arconada and if he had his hand outstretched he would think about making the drawings until he reached that moment,” he says. In adolescence he went from those first childhood drawings to more formal ones, it was at that time when the mobility of dance captured him. Some sequences that were also everyday to him because Diego was born into a family with a deep relationship with dance. His mother performed at La Scala in Milan, participated in the Salzburg Festival and ran an academy in Astillero that his sister now manages. “I have always been watching dance. It is a very complicated language, but I like it a lot,” he explains.

In Santander he began to study in the workshop of the painter Fernando García Baldeón and learned “a lot of natural writing” which was very useful for him to develop a technique by hand with skill and speed. In 2000 he moved to Madrid to study at an academy because he wanted to make cartoons. He quickly learned to work with digital formats and soon began to be in demand professionally. In 2002 his name stood out when he directed the animated short film

, based on

, by Manuel de Falla. The film was nominated for the Goya in the category of best fiction short film and had an important international run that opened the door to a frenetic pace of work. Among other assignments, he made an animated video about Carmen Amaya with choreography by Eva Yerbabuena and another tribute to Camarón that he illustrated with the dance of Rocío Molina. Also at that time he collaborated in the film

, in a flamenco dance sequence designed by Carlos Baena, animation director for Paramount Pictures and Pixar. The film won two Oscars. After almost a decade as a professional and at a time of “overwhelming” work, he decided to take “a step back.” He returned to focusing on dance: “I started doing other dance animations. Then a video of Sylvie Guillem appeared. She had followed her career all her life, but it was a shock to see that and I went to look for her.”

The famous French dancer was in London: "I stood where she was performing, I spoke to a person from the theater, I gave her a DVD with illustrations of Sylvie doing some movement, a dossier about my work and a letter explaining what I wanted to develop." The guy who collected the material gave him zero chances of success, however, the next day Sylvie Guillem contacted him, enthusiastic about the idea. It was the beginning of a project on which they worked together for two years. He sent that animated film to Lincoln Center and “within two minutes” they responded. It was 2013 and it was the first time that he exhibited in one of the most important cultural institutions on the planet.

Since then he has been able to dedicate himself to his work at a slower pace, something essential due to the thoroughness of his drawings, in which he uses a mixed technique of colored pencils and ink on paper. In addition to dance, he has also developed several animations about sports. In this discipline, two works attract attention. One about the Basque pelota player Juan Martínez de Irujo and another about the high jumper Dick Fosbury. “Dance is an art, it is clear. But this too,” he points out. These last two works, along with a retrospective of his work, were presented this January at the El Albéitar Cultural Athenaeum in León before just over 100 people. There, in addition to taking a visual tour of a good part of his career, he explained his work methodology and his influences, among which he highlighted some booklets from his childhood with moving drawings of Olympic sports made by the cartoonist Jan, known for being the author of Superlópez. To close the meeting at El Albéitar, Dance on Paper, a selection of his works about dance, was screened in the movie theater in 35 millimeters. In addition, Eduardo Martínez, first dancer of the National Ballet of Spain, danced three pieces in synchronization with a dancer drawn by Pinilla who projected her movements on the screen.

In February, the Cantabrian returned to Lincoln Center. There he presented a work that he has done for four years with Svetlana Zajárova, a dancer from the Bolshoi Theater, and a compilation of Spanish dance sequences. In addition, he is working on an animated feature and a comic based on an unpublished script by Carlos Pérez Merinero, which takes place in Madrid in November 1975. On this occasion he has worked with actors to generate the situations that he illustrates. Quite a challenge because for the first time he has to limit his movements. But the objective is the same as when he was little: “Express the character's feelings through drawings, so that you understand what he is doing. That seems like pure magic to me.” And he adds: “Fosbury, who was called crazy because of the jump he invented, came to see the movie I made and loved it. For me that recognition is success.”

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