Hans van Manen timeline

Of the four works Van Manen creates for Nederlands Dans Theater after the turn of the century, Simple Things – made for NDT 2 in November 2001 – is a highlight. It is one of the ballets that superbly demonstrates his ability to blend totally different pieces of music into an absolutely logical whole. The ballet opens with a virtuoso, challenging male duet to compelling accordion music. Then two girls join the boys and the atmosphere becomes more elegant and serious. To music by Joseph Haydn and Pēteris Vasks, the four dancers perform duets together in shifting combinations. After these brief encounters, the girls leave the stage – as if they were just chance passers-by in the boys’ lives – and the boys resume their choreographic duel. 

Female dancer Parvaneh Scharafali, one of the original cast, says, “Hans plays with the music. He has a very refined musicality, which was quite difficult for us dancers to pick up, especially in the faster sections.” Her former dancer partner Lukáš Timulak adds, “However, he could demonstrate really well what he wanted from us. And he thoroughly enjoyed that. If he was a bit younger, I think he’d still love to dance a ballet like Simple Things himself.”

In January 2003, Van Manen’s last piece for Nederlands Dans Theater, Monologue, Dialogue, has its world premiere. Set to various Bach compositions, the work also marks the farewell to the stage of his muse Sol León, who therefore has an important and impressive part in the ballet.

The fact that Van Manen’s collaboration with the company in The Hague is ‘showing cracks’ is reflected in dance critic Eddie Vetter’s review of the premiere in the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf. “The year 2002 passed Nederlands Dans Theater by without a single Hans van Manen ballet. It as if he has saved up all the good things and combined them in Monologue, Dialogue, an unparalleled series of female solos and duets. It is a new peak in an oeuvre that is anyway so rich in highlights.”

In July 2003, Van Manen finally takes the plunge and leaves Nederlands Dans Theater, because his work, he says, “does not feature often enough either in the programmes in the Netherlands or in tours abroad to justify a position as resident choreographer.”

In the Netherlands, besides Dutch National Ballet and Nederlands Dans Theater, Introdans now also has an extensive Van Manen repertoire. Under the inspiring leadership of artistic director Roel Voorintholt, the Arnhem-based company has performed nearly 25 existing Van Manen works since 1995, in programmes both for adults and for youngsters. For one of those children’s productions, in 2003, Van Manen creates Sticky Piece, especially for Introdans. In this ‘ballet for two’, the dancers literally stick together, through an invention by costume designer Keso Dekker, who put Velcro on their costumes. The effect is hilarious. It is only near the end, when the dancers emerge as bright pink and orange butterflies, that they can detach themselves and really let rip.

About Voorintholt’s decision to give Van Manen’s ballets (and excerpts from them) an important place in the children’s programming, Van Manen says, “Roel not only has a group of amazingly dedicated dancers at his disposal, but he also has very good taste and an extraordinarily good sense of what works. As a boy of eleven, I saw Scapino Ballet and was sold immediately. I don’t doubt that this regularly happens now with Introdans as well.” In his view it does not matter that most of the works were not originally made for children. “Children are a fantastic audience. They react directly and are incredibly intelligent.”

Van Manen’s return to Dutch National Ballet as resident choreographer is celebrated in March 2005 with a world premiere by the master in the programme Master Moves, entitled Frank Bridge Variations. In the ballet, set to nine variations from Benjamin Britten’s Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge, Van Manen indulges in contrasts: sharp and flowing, precise and free, angry and melancholy. But no matter how diverse, together the nine sections form a natural, yet stunning unity, in which even the most familiar Van Manen characteristics are given a new sheen. “A magnificent comeback (..) a ‘typical’ Van Manen ballet: steeped in his trademark, continually surprising in its details, light and breathable through its variations”, in the opinion of Dutch newspaper Trouw. Another Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf writes, “Van Manen immediately comes up with a direct hit (..) The choreographer succeeds in forging the nine variations by Benjamin Britten into a masterly unity of diversity”.

Van Manen dedicates Frank Bridge Variations to his former NDT muses Sol León and Paul Lightfoot, whose daughter Saura (born in 1998) is his god-daughter. The ballet also marks the ‘birth’ of a new Van Manen muse: Igone de Jongh, who was promoted to principal dancer with Dutch National Ballet in 2003. Between 2005 and 2014, Van Manen will create several ballets for her, and she will also interpret many roles originally made for dancers like Alexandra Radius, Coleen Davis, Fiona Lummis and Sol León.

In 2006, Dutch National Ballet asks Van Manen to curate the company’s Holland Festival programme, which is therefore aptly named His Master's Choice. Besides a world premiere by Ted Brandsen, Stealing Time, the programme comprises works by three of Van Manen’s ‘heroes’: Balanchine’s Kammermusik No. 2, the Dutch premiere of Jerome Robbins’ A Suite of Dances and a new work for the company by Van Manen’s ‘German friend’ Martin Schläpfer, entitled Streichquartett. “Top evening of dance with Hans van Manen”, reads the headline in the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad.

About his choice of Balanchine’s Kammermusik No. 2, Van Manen says, “The way it’s constructed and the ease with which it all flows together: I always watch it in total amazement.” And about Robbins’ A Suite of Dances, he says, “Everything that’s good is inspiring. I feel that about Robbins too. That Suite of Dances, the solo he made for Baryshnikov, with only that cellist on stage as well. Such incredible simplicity, yet so creative and varied at the same time - absolutely wonderful.”

In honour of Van Manen’s 75th birthday, Dutch National Ballet organises an extensive Hans van Manen Festival, in 2007. In the space of just under three weeks, no fewer than 21 of the master choreographer’s works are performed, not just by Dutch National Ballet, but also by San Francisco Ballet, Stuttgarter Ballett, Bayerisches Staatsballett, Balletmainz, Nederlands Dans Theater, Introdans and the Dutch National Ballet Academy. There are also guest performances by Uliana Lopatkina, Ivan Kozlov and Sofiane Sylve. The opening night is attended by Queen Beatrix and Princess Máxima. Prior to the performance, students of the Amsterdam University of the Arts dance Hans van Manen’s clog dance Clogs on the square outside the Music Theatre (now Dutch National Opera & Ballet). 

The Dutch newspaper Trouw writes, “At the end of all the programme premieres, the maestro laid his flowers at the feet of the ensemble (..) The Hans van Manen Festival thus became not just an ode to the most important Dutch choreographer, but also an ode to dance and its practitioners.” And the prominent German dance critic Jochen Schmidt notes in the newspaper Die Welt, “When the guest of honour joined his artists on stage after the final curtain call, the audience rose as one in one big movement, for the most spontaneous standing ovation this critic has ever seen. Everyone in the theatre was probably aware they had just witnessed a historic dance event.”