Madrid — Nacho Duato arrived early for a rehearsal of his company, Compania Nacional de Danza, at its spacious studios on the city’s outskirts on a beautiful summer day here last July.

Beginning the rehearsal, which would serve as preparation for his company’s engagement at the Brooklyn academy of Music beginning tomorrow, Mr. Duato, who is 50, asked his dancers to watch an alternative way to do a sequence in “White darkness,” demonstrating by running across the room and throwing himself to the floor, then stretching out his arms as if reaching for an anchor. Celebrated for his vivid images, he projected fear, desperation, and longing in a matter of moments. The dancers followed his suggestions, making a fluid transition to the next section where they broke into couples, curving their bodies against one another, consoling each other through touch.

“Nacho creates movements almost spontaneously,” a dancer, Francisco Lorenzo, said, “and with them, he transforms any situation or subject into the most subtle and meaningful dance language. Over and over again, he helps us see the beauty of things as if for the first time.”

Mr. Duato’s exploratory nature has served him well. His company, immensely popular at home and abroad, is Spain’s only notable contemporary dance troupe, and, as a result of his leadership of Compania Nacional de Danza, Mr. Duato can be credited with expanding the frame of Spanish dance.

Until his appointment as artistic director in 1990, the company was far from being lauded. Prior to Mr. Duato’s leadership, Compania Nacional de danza had seen a succession of four directors in 10 years, and suffered from a lack of style, personality, and viable repertory.

“it hasn’t been easy to get this far,” Mr. Duato, an aristocratic man with a bearing earned from years of horseback riding, said. “Spanish dance culture wasn’t as developed as in other European countries. i wanted audiences to see themselves reflected on the stage. it was new to the Spanish, but i felt that it was the only way they’d be able to connect with our style.”

Until Mr. Duato took over and began introducing dancers and audiences to a variety of contemporary dance, the Spanish audiences tended to prefer folk dance, flamenco, and European ballet, and seemed far from ready for Mr. Duato’s dark, earthy, and politically resonant works.

“We had to pioneer,” he said. “But what an adventure. I would not be the choreographer I am if I hadn’t had this company all these years. It forced us to grow, and our public grew along with us.”

The company’s popularity abroad also grew. After a performance in Paris in 2005, the critic René Sirvin of Le Figaro described Mr. Duato’s work as having “compelling beauty” and “a Spanish nobility,” while in Australia, a critic at the Sydney Morning Herald, Jill Sykes, wrote in 2001, “The Compania Nacional de Danza takes your breath away.”

Though thoroughly Spanish, Mr. Duato, who was born in the Mediterranean city of Valencia, brings a decidedly international sensibility to his company and choreography. More than half of his 30 dancers come from countries other than Spain, and, in addition to Mr. Duato’s works, perform pieces by a wide range of foreign choreographers including William Forsythe, Jir?í Kylián, and Maurice Béjart. Mr. Duato also choreographs for the Stuttgart Ballet, the San Francisco Ballet, the Royal Ballet, and the Nederlands Dans Theater, among others, and first made his name in New York in 1997 with the witty, athletic male trio “Remanso” for American Ballet Theatre.

“I want to contribute to the culture of Spain,” he said. “Spain is not mainly flamenco and bullfighting. It’s Arab, Jewish, Roman, Celtic, and Phoenician traditions all in one country. I try to encompass them, to avoid a narrow perspective.”

Mr. Duato comes by his worldliness naturally. Confronted with Spain’s dearth of ballet schools in his teens, he left for London to audition for the Rambert School of Ballet. “I was told I was too old to start dancing,” he said, “that I had no technique and no training. But they did accept me. They said that even though I didn’t know much about dance, I did have something special that made them look at me.”

He expanded his studies at Mr. Béjart’s Mudra School in Brussels, and at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in New York, and for one year, performed with the Cullberg Ballet in Stockholm. “I found my artistic dance home with Nederlands Dans Theater and Jir?í Kylián in 1981. I did my first ballet, ‘Jardí Tancat’ in 1983. Jir? í supported and pushed me from the beginning.”

By becoming a choreographer with Nederlands Dans Theater, Mr. Duato started off in the aesthetic direction of many European choreographers who favor theatrical dance over abstract. Two works on the upcoming program demonstrate his penchant for taking on complex and controversial subjects.

“Castrati,” which is set to Vivaldi choral works, deals with the tradition of castrating male singers in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, in order to retain their soprano or alto voices. “White Darkness,” which uses a baroque and minimalist score by Karl Jenkins, explores the effects of drugs, an especially emotional subject for Mr. Duato, whose sister died as a result of years of drug use.

In a lighter vein, “Por Vos Muero,” with 15th- and 16th-century Spanish music and sets and costumes by Mr. Duato, celebrates the art of courtship, with cloaked religious figures whirling through incense and dancers taking on the manners and gestures of a more formal period.

After the rehearsal, in his small office, decorated with only one tall, green plant and an earth-colored, Indian kilm, Mr. Duato shed some light on his process. “I feel it’s my responsibility to deal with both the dark and light aspects of life,” he said. “We search our whole lives to discover who we are. As a choreographer, my search is through music and movement and the sensuality and eroticism of the body. Dance is like poetry and is best felt through images. My dancers inspire me. I look at them and see what I have to do.”

Leading a government-sponsored company gives him many advantages, in spite of the bureaucracy. “I have complete autonomy,” he said. “I don’t have to please sponsors or audiences — though naturally I don’t want to displease them either. This gives me freedom to concentrate on getting better and if I choose, to be provocative. I’ve changed. My works are more introverted and deeper now. But that’s part of aging, one of the best parts.”