Hans van Manen timeline

Of all the more than 150 works created by Van Manen, there is actually only one that was ever a real flop: Einlage, from 1980. Van Manen initially makes the ballet as an intermezzo for Dutch National Opera’s production of Johann Strauss' Die Fledermaus. When fellow choreographer Toer van Schayk returns a ballet commission not long afterwards, Van Manen is asked to expand the opera choreography into a stand-alone ballet, and is given just six days to do so. Van Manen himself is therefore already expecting lukewarm reviews, but they turn out to be disapproving and, in one case, even destructive. To his regret, Van Manen slaps the critic in question – who calls Einlage a ‘travesty’ – but apparently they take it in their stride and shortly afterwards the two go out to dinner together to clear the air. 

In 1981, Van Manen comes back with a masterpiece. For the occasion of Dutch National Ballet’s twentieth anniversary, he creates Sarcasmen, which is still one of his most acclaimed ‘ballets for two’. With a pianist as the third, important link, the dancers Rachel Beaujean and Clint Farha play a provocative game of attraction and rejection, to Cinq Sarcasmes by Sergei Prokofiev. The duet is not only a triumph for principal dancer Clint Farha, but at one fell swoop it also confirms Beaujean’s name as the master choreographer’s new muse. The couple dance the piece hundreds of times, and Van Manen is always very specific about how he wants the duet performed. Beaujean says, “I remember receiving lots of compliments after dancing it at Theater Carré and feeling really popular. But the next day Hans said we had to rehearse it again. He thought it had been over the top.” Farha adds, “We were treading a fine line. Sarcasmen has to be provocative and tantalizing, but at the same time classy, chic and erotic.”

As Pianovariaties II, Sarcasmen forms part of a series of five works: Pianovariaties I to V, created by Van Manen between 1980 and 1984, with which he enjoys great success in these years at Theater Carré. Besides Sarcasmen, the third part, Trois gnossiennes, to music by Erik Satie, also turns out to be a timeless work, which has been performed by numerous star dancers in the Netherlands and abroad since its premiere in 1982. Following the vicious satire of Sarcasmen, a temporary truce between the sexes appears to have been declared in Trois gnossiennes. 

Although it starts with repressed tension between the man and woman, the atmosphere gradually changes to one of submission and harmony. At a revival in 2012, the British newspaper the Financial Times writes, “New York may have had Balanchine, London Ashton and MacMillan, but since the 1950s, Amsterdam has cultivated its own, more discreet neoclassical master: Hans van Manen (..) Trois gnossiennes is a masterpiece, serene on the surface yet ripe with slow-burning tension.”

In 1983, Van Manen creates two productions for small theatres. For the modern dance company Stichting Dansproductie, he creates the successful Portrait, for the dancer Pauline Daniëls (which then also becomes part of his series Pianovariaties). In the piece, parts of her muscular, slow-moving body are picked out with a spotlight (operated by Henk van Dijk). The work appears to be clearly related to Van Manen’s second love in this period: photography. Van Manen biographer Eva van Schaik writes later, “Portrait is not only a portrait of Daniëls, but equally a self-portrait of Van Manen.”

In the same year, Van Manen also creates In and Out, to songs by Laurie Anderson and Nina Hagen, for Dutch National Ballet’s Holland Festival programme, presented at Theater Bellevue, in Amsterdam. An important source of inspiration for the subtly humorous choreography, in which the twelve dancers continually creep in and out of three boxes, is the question, ‘How many people fit into a phone booth?’ At a performance by the Spanish company Ballet Víctor Ullate, in 1998, The New York Times writes, “Amid the kinetic jokes for dancers squeezed into the equivalent of telephone booths, there are some well-armed barbs about human behavior.”

In 1985, Van Manen creates Corps, to Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto, for Stuttgarter Ballett, with star ballerina and artistic director Marcia Haydée in one of the three leading female roles.
In a later interview, Haydée says about these three women, “In my view, they can either stand for the different life phases of one woman, or for three separate women.” And she says the same applies to the male ensemble in the ballet. “The twelve dancers could represent all the men who turn up in a woman’s life of, but they could also jointly represent just one man. That’s the great thing about Hans’ work: he leaves that sort of thing up to the audience’s imagination.” 

Looking back on the ballet in 2007, more than twenty years after the premiere, Haydée says, “Corps was a great gift. Especially as Hans used me as I was at that stage of my life. I don’t know whether he did that on purpose, but I could just be myself and I didn’t have to play a role.” Two months after the premiere in Stuttgart, Corps is added to Dutch National Ballet’s repertoire, when it is received with unanimous praise. Under the heading “Corps, a masterly ballet”, the Dutch newspaper Het Parool writes, “It’s a wonder how Van Manen renews himself in his work from time to time, yet still remains instantly recognisable.”

On 23 September 1986, the Music Theatre Amsterdam (now Dutch National Opera & Ballet) opens its doors with a joint official opening performance by Dutch National Ballet and Dutch National Opera. For Dutch National Ballet’s own opening production, which premieres two days later, Van Manen creates Opening. In the mostly favourable reviews, the critics zoom in on the way Van Manen makes optimal use of the much bigger space afforded by the Music Theatre stage, whereby he also light-heartedly shows how restrictive the previous space was in the Stadsschouwburg. The Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant writes, “At the end of the first section, the walls are pulled apart. This change has a surprising and even shocking visual effect, as if a big room suddenly transforms into a town square. The latter is so enormous, it could give you agoraphobia.”

On 18 May and 12 June 1987, Dutch National Ballet takes part in Amsterdam Cultural Capital of Europe. At the opening event on the first occasion, Hans van Manen’s iconic video ballet Live is presented both live at Theater Carré (attended by Queen Beatrix, Prince Claus and the Ministers of Culture from various European countries) and on a video screen at the Music Theatre. On the second occasion, the company presents the world premiere of Hans van Manen’s Symphonieën der Nederlanden, set to the music of the same name by Louis Andriessen. Inspired by the swinging, jazzy composition, written for two brass orchestras, Van Manen has 24 dancers walk in clear, geometric patterns – like an American marching band – whereby the ensemble splits up into smaller and smaller formations that shift apart, together and through one another. “Reliably, strictly and tautly, they make tattoo-like patterns, producing wonderful optical effects”, writes the Dutch newspaper Trouw.

For the thirtieth anniversary of Nederlands Dans Theater in 1989, Van Manen is invited by artistic director Jiří Kylián to make ‘a real birthday cake’ for the celebrations. Van Manen is immediately enthusiastic, but instead of serving up sweet, pink patisserie, he bakes a frothy, black cake, scented with a layer of sarcasm and drenched in champagne. In his ‘five-layer’ festive cake, he conjures up an image of ‘a chic party, attended by chic people who soon turn out to be not so chic at all’. After the premiere, Black Cake is received rather condescendingly as an ‘occasional ballet’, but less than a year later the critics admit their error of judgement, then writing that the ballet is “much more than a one-off, tasty dance cake”. Since then, the ballet has been performed worldwide, always to thunderous applause.