2024-09-30 19:28:00
Traces of modern dance have disappeared as their history has fallen deeper into oblivion. Anna Pavlova’s important influence on the development of the avant-garde, which brought together modern composers, visual artists and new musicians for the stage arts at the beginning of the 20th century, is remembered in an unexpected place: The Hague, the city by cord. Here the “Hotel des Indes” towers in the air next to other palaces. Inside, it’s so warm and quiet that you can easily feel like you’re transported back 150 years between tall marble columns and red velvet armchairs if the influencers don’t appear in formal clothes on your grand staircase. foyer. If you turn right on the thick carpets, you come to the building’s library. Here, black and white pictures tell the story of the Villa, which was converted into a hotel 140 years ago, and its most famous guests: politicians, crown princes, rock stars, company heads. But the library took its name from the ballerina Anna Matveyevna Pavlova, who was born in St.
It was Mikhail Fokin’s Dying Swan, he was the first big star in Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. When he performed in Lima on a world tour in 1917, a thirteen-year-old boy who would later turn London into one of the three great ballets of the world fell in love with his image: Frederick Ashton. In the winter of 1931, Anna Pavlova traveled from studio to theater again, this time for her farewell performances. In The Hague he contracted pneumonia, from which he died a few days before his 50th birthday – while he was a guest at the “Hotel des Indes”.
Ballet with unique selling points
Who knows who Pavlova inspired to become dancers in her Dutch imagination? It would take until after the Second World War for ballet and modern dance to take on two institutional forms in the Netherlands. What’s fascinating is how quickly The Hague became the European focal point for modern ballet. For decades, the Nederlands Dans Theatre, founded in 1959, seemed to be the perfect company to develop neoclassical ballet in a contemporary, socially relevant and quality-promising direction. Hans van Manen and Jiří Kyliàn designed it simultaneously and alternately, depending on whether van Manen danced his masterpieces at the NDT or at the Dutch National Ballet.
The unique selling point of NDT is the perfection and brilliance with which the company’s dancers present each new work in new languages, their quality, their sovereignty, their presence. Kyliàn’s surreal, melancholic, Prague-born gloom and van Manen’s powerfully direct, brilliant performances were must-sees in the 80s and 90s.
NDT has long lost its unique selling point. The days when it was said that some companies could dance 19th century repertoire, others could dance Forsythe, and some tried both inadequately, are over. The choice of choreographers in ensembles today is huge. Everyone wants to attract attention by the first shows and less by the historical information that shows these about dance. New is new: Everyone wants something by Sharon Eyal, by Hofesh Shechter, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. Under Emily Molnar, who has led NDT since 2020 and is not a musician herself, the look does not go further back than the early 2000s.
The first he released was the mix Jiří Kyliàn’s “Vanishing Twins” from 2008, Hofesh Shechter’s “Clowns” from 2016 and the debut “Ties Unseen” by the youngest of the three singers, Christos Papadopoulos. He studied at the Amsterdam School For New Dance Development like Sasha Waltz, a kind of postmodern school, he just became really famous, and his stuff is still the most impressive. There are sixteen dancers on whom Papadopoulos puts the “invisible chains” of the title, a truly choreographic concept that develops in space very well.
The jerky plug of the head, neck and shoulders
The step element in the synchronized noise does not leave a place on the stage that is not used, the swarm goes everywhere, surrounded by electricity by the command group of Jeph Vanger. The music is not too minimalistic, neither passionate nor particularly mechanical, neither happy nor melancholic, but easy to listen to and easy to imagine in the garden. As you continue to the half-hour, of repeating the choreography, the more you notice how much individuality the harmony is doing. You have all the time in the world to watch the dancers individually. On opening night, the most impressive person was Emmitt Cawley, present and deeply immersed in the action.
But everyone dances as a group passionately and perfectly, as if an invisible magnet is guiding them in the background of the stage. They initially stood as if they were billiard balls in the corner before the game began. They stay together and never look at each other. They don’t have to, because attraction doesn’t work through looks, but comes from within. The twitching, the jerky tilt of the head, neck and shoulders with which things begin to remain only in the idiosyncrasy of the dance. Papadopoulos obviously does not like holidays and thinks in a less formal way until the end. This is strong, but ultimately it’s too similar to Sharon Eyal’s beauty and falls short of its originality and complexity. He enjoyed watching “Ties Unseen”, but ultimately he had to admit that he was a little disappointed at the end.
Hofesh Shechter’s evil, murderous “clowns” repeatedly suggest close-range shooting and the slitting of the throat. Perhaps one should see violence as a connection to Kyliàn’s piece, in which women repeatedly become violent towards men in duets. It is perhaps underestimated how difficult it is to choose the most important repertoire work from especially the most recent, seemingly relatively recent, and what it takes for the new choreographers to do everything in their power to shine on the great history of modern dance. , whose light will not burn out quickly.
#Show #Nederlands #Dans #Theater