Amser Da - Dutch National Ballet New Season

National Opera and Ballet

Author Jane Lambert © 2022 Powerhouse Ballet All rights reserved

 

The Dutch are good at puns.  It may be because every schoolchild in the Netherlands is expected to learn enough English, French or German to hold a simple conversation in any of those languages.  One of the best puns came from Remco van Revenstein after the 2020 US presidential election.  It went like this: "Question: "Why does Mr Trunp have to leave the White House?" Answer "Because it's for Biden."

Here is one pun that not even the Dutch will have dreamt up. The Welsh for "Good time" is "Amser da" and of course almost the name of their leading city. If I ran a travel agency, airline or the Dutch tourist board in Cardiff, Swansea or Newport I would be flogging that pun for all that it is worth and then some.

That is because the Dutch National Ballet has just announced its new season in a press release dated 29 March 2022.  It will attract theatre-goers in droves from around the world including, no doubt, many from Wales and the rest of the UK. Highlights will include:

• Celebrate between 13 to 28 Sept 2022: A mixed bill consisting of Yugen by Wayne McGregor to the music of Leonard Bernstein, Christopher Wheeldon's The Two of Us, Ted Brandsen's The Chairman Dances  to the music of John Adams and Milena Siderova's  Regnum to the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart;
• The Sleeping Beauty between 12 Oct 2022 to 2 Jan 2023;
• Balanchine, Van Manen and Arques: 9 - 19 Nov 2022  a national tour with Balanchine's Four Temperaments, various works by Hans van Manen and Arques's Manoeuvre;
• Dawson 8 to 18 Dec 2022 a double bill consisting of a new work by David Dawson and Dawson's The Four Seasons to the music of Max Richter;
• The Junior Company Ballet Bubbles 26 Jan to 15 Feb 2023;
• Verdi Requiem in collaboration with the National Opera 9 Feb - 25 Feb 2023;
• Swan Lake 11 May - 16 June 2023;
• Dorian by  Ernst Meisner and Marco Gerris of IDH Dance Collective to the music of  Joey Rouken; and 
• Forsythe Festival between 10 and 27 June 2023.

The company will also take part in the Fall for Dance Festuva in New York this autumn.

World Ballet Day is coming

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One of the compensations of Autumn is World Ballet Day in which five of the world's top companies present their offerings and those of their guests. This year it falls on 5 Oct 2017.

The day begins in Melbourne with the Australian Ballet. We have a special interest in that company as they hosted Amelia Sierevogel earlier this year.  She told us all about her experiences with that company in Melbourne City of Dance 23 May 2017.  The Australian Ballet is sharing its slot with three other companies with which we have a connection, namely the Queensland Ballet, the Hong Kong Ballet and the West Australian Ballet.

We welcomed the Queensland Ballet to London in 2015 (see A dream realized: the Queensland Ballet in London 12 Aug 2015).  Gita and I also had the honour of meeting its legendary artistic director, Li Cunxin, when he visited the London Ballet Circle. Amelia and I have another connection with that company since our teacher, Fiona Noonan, trained and danced with them. Another favourite teacher, Jane Tucker, danced with the Hong Kong Ballet who are also guests of the Australian Ballet. The third guest that we follow with interest is the West Australian Ballet who are dancing David Nixon's The Great Gatsby in Perth this month.

The baton passes to the Bolshoi whose Taming of the Shrew delighted audiences in London last year (see Bolshoi's Triumph - The Taming of the Shrew 4 Aug 2017). The choreographer of that work was Jean-Christophe Maillot whose company Les Ballets de Monte Carlo will share the Bolshoi's slot. The Bolshoi's other guests are the Netherlands Dance Theatre who are well known and greatly appreciated here.  The Bolshoi will rehearse for us Balanchine's Diamonds and The Golden Age and introduce us to The Moscow State Academy of Choreography.

Next comes London with the Royal Ballet and four of our other great companies all of whom I know well and admire greatly. The Royal Ballet will rehearse Anastasia, La Fille mal gardée, The Sleeping Beauty and a new ballet by Charlotte Edmonds. Students from the Royal Ballet School will dance Concerto and the company will dance Anastasia.  The Royal Ballet's guests include some of the world's greatest companies including The Dutch National Ballet, the Royal Danish Ballet, the Royal Swedish Ballet, La Scala, the Stuttgart Ballet and the Vienna State Ballet. This should be the highpoint of the day.

Across the Atlantic to Toronto with the National Ballet of Canada. They will be rehearsing Cinderella and Onegin and interview the great Karen Kain. Wayne McGregor and Robert Binet.  Their guests include the Miami City Ballet whom Gita saw in February (see Gita Mistry Attending the Ballet in Florida: Miami City Ballet's Program Three 6 March 2017) and the Boston Ballet who were in London in 2013 (see High as a Flag on the 4th July 7 July 2917).

Finally to San Francisco, one of the oldest and finest companies in America who also promise rehearsals of Diamonds and Cinderella as well as Liam Scarlett's Frankenstein, Helgi Tomasson's Haffner Symphony and a new work by Yuri Possokhov. Their guests include the Houston Ballet which suffered badly from Hurricane Harvey (see Houston Ballet  30 Aug 2017). I take a special interest in that company partly because of its many connections with this country. partly because Li Cunxin started his career there but mainly because the outstanding young artist, Emilie Tassinari, has recently joined the corps.

Every year seems to be better than the last and this year promises to be the best of all. Nobody can watch the whole feast on one day but, happily, recordings remain on YouTube for months after the event.  It takes about a year to savour it all.

Statistics

Since I started this blog on 25 Feb 2016 I have posted 804 articles and received over 200,000 page hits. Our 10 most popular articles have been as follows:

1. A Romeo and Juliet for our Times 7 Nov 2016
2. Meet Gavin McCaig of Northern Ballet 3 Sep 2014
3. The Dutch National Ballet Junior Company's best Performance yet 8 Feb 2015
4. Thinking out Loud about Ballet West 8 Feb 2016 
5. Ballet West's Romeo and Juliet 1 Feb 2015 
6. The Nutcracker as it really should be danced - No Gimmicks but with Love and Joy 20 Mar 2014
7. Michaela's Masterclass 8 July 2015 
8. Mandev Sokhi 10 Oct 2015
9. Ballet Cymru's Summer Tour 22 May 2016 
10. A Unique Opportunity to learn a Bit of The Nutcracker 12 Oct 2016

Readers seem to be most interested in Ballet Cymru with three articles in the top 10. That may be because the company is about to start a short season in London and dance Darius James and Amy Doughty's Little Red Riding Hood at the Cardiff Millennium Centre on 4 Dec 2016. Sadly one of the articles in the top ten mourned the loss of the talented Mandev Sokhi.

The Dutch National Ballet's Junior Company is also very popular with readers who enjoyed my review of the opening night of the Junior Company's tour of the Netherlands in 2015.  There was also a lot of interest in one of my very favourite young dancers, Michaela DePrince, who visited London last year and this to deliver master classes at Danceworks. 

In fact, there was considerable interest in the young. I was delighted to see Northern Ballet's Gavin McCaig listed at number 2.  Actually, he led the field for well over two years until Ballet Cymru claimed the number one spot a few days ago. Reviews of Ballet West's Romeo and Juliet and The Nutcracker by Ballet West were also very popular as was my review of the same ballet by Chelmsford Ballet.  And still talking about The Nutcracker I am delighted that my preview of Jane Tucker's workshop on the ballet for KNT at the Dancehouse Theatre (which I attended) was also in the top 10.

For only the third month ever we have received more than 10,000 hits in one month and we still have a few days of November to run. My main audiences outside the UK seem to be the USA, Russia, Germany, France and the Netherlands in that order.  Once again, I should like to thank all my contributors, Joanne Goodman, Peter Groves, Janet McNulty, Gita Mistry, David Murley, Alison Winward and Mel Wong for all their posts. The blog would have been much less interesting without your articles. I should also like to thank all who have supplied photos and other content especially Richard Heideman of the Dutch National Ballet,  György Jávorszky of the Hungarian National Ballet, Rae Piper of Chantry Dance and Jenny Isaacs and Patricia Vallis of Ballet Cymru.