Four Seasons

The Four Seasons

DAVID DAWSON

As a part of  this programme, ‘associate artist’ David Dawson’s The Four Seasons, a co-production with Semperoper Ballett, will have its Dutch premiere. Dawson is known for demanding his dancers to surrender themselves completely to the choreography, in order for both them and the audience to be transported to a otherworldly, poetic and yet sublime reality. For this choreography, he was inspired by Max Richter's arrangement of Vivaldi's famous Four Seasons. The result is a monumental and distinctly athletic work with the cycle of life as its subject. In The Four Seasons, Dawson uses his aesthetic movement language and snapshots of many lives in constant change to tell a personal story about the course of the seasons. 

Dawson attributes the success of his works partly to the special, intense collaborations with composers and set, costume and lighting designers. He even refers to his work as 'Gesamtkunstwerken'. Dawson created The Four Seasons, just like previous pieces, in close collaboration with his regular creative team: the German set designer Eno Henze, the Japanese costume designer and former principal with Dutch National Ballet Yumiko Takeshima and the Dutch lighting designer Bert Dalhuysen. Henze created a set design for The Four Seasons in which the four seasons are represented by various geometric figures which are floating through the stage space.

The Two of US

CHRISTOPHER WHEELDON

“When ballet dancers go folk or pop, it can be forced and awkward, but the outcome here is good: like a casual outfit through which you can sense the bones of classical technique underneath”, The New York Times wrote about Christopher Wheeldon’s latest creation The Two of Us. Wheeldon choreographed this work to four wistful songs by the famous Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell and allows the clear but melancholic sentiment that characterises this music to resonate in his choreography. With free, spontaneous movements full of emotion and in both solos and pas de deux, the two dancers carrying this piece tell the story of two people who are drifting away from each other. A story that speaks of memory, longing and vulnerability, but that is, above all, utterly genuine and heart-catching.

In the last couple of years, Christopher Wheeldon has proved himself a highly versatile choreographer. With Dutch National Opera & Ballet he successively presented his works Continuum (2005), Tryst (2009), Duet (2012) and Concerto Concordia (2015) and in 2012 he choreographed the full-length ballet fairytale Cinderella, a co-production of Dutch National Ballet and San Francisco Ballet. His latest work The Two of Us will have its European premiere as part of Four Seasons.