The van Manen Festival, Programme IV

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Dutch National Ballet and Guests Hans van Manen Festival IV National Opera and Ballet auditorium 29 June 2022 20:15

I would argue that Hans van Manen is the greatest living choreographer and one of the greatest of all time.  I have been a fan ever since I first saw his work some 50 years or so ago.   In that time he has made over 150 ballets and I have seen a fair number of them.  His works are performed regularly by the world's leading ballet companies including those of the United Kingdom.

Earlier this month van Manen celebrated his 90th birthday.   To mark the occasion, the Dutch National Ballet ended its 2021-2022 season with a special Hans van Manen Festival.  Between 8 and 29 June 2022, the Dutch National Ballet and companies from Austria and Germany performed 19 of van Manen's works arranged in four separate programmes.  

I attended the fourth of those programmes on 29 June 2022 which consisted of Four Schumann Pieces, In the Future, Variations for Two Couples, Solo and Concertante.  I chose that programme for three reasons.  It was an opportunity to see the latest recruits to the Junior Company which I had followed closely since 2013.  They were to perform In the Future which I had previously seen at their 5th-anniversary celebration at the  Stadsschouwburg on 15 April 2018, the 2018 gala and in London on 5 July 2019.  Secondly, one of the works was to be performed by the Vienna State Ballet and another by the Stuttgart Ballet which had been Cranko's company.  These are companies that rarely visit this country and it was a chance to see them. Finally, the fourth programme included Concertante which is the work by van Manen that I know best.

Van Manen had created Four Schumann Pieces for the Royal Ballet.  It was first performed at Covent Garden on 31 Jan 1975 with Sir Anthony Dowell in the leading role.  The music is Robert Schumann's String quartet in A opus 41 no. 3.   The ballet revolves around the leading male and there is some YouTube footage of Dowell in that role.  It was part of a mixed bill which I attended.  I can't remember much about it but it would have been one of the reasons why I began to admire van Manen.   According to the programme notes, the male lead was later performed by Rudolf Nureyev, Hans Ebelaar, Wayne Eagling and Matthew Golding each of whom interpreted it in a different way.  The company that performed the piece on 29 June was the Vienna State Ballet.   Davide Dato was the lead male  He was supported by Hyo-Jung Kang and Arne Vandervelde, Liudmila Konovalova and  Francesco Costa, Elena Bottaro and Igor Milos, Sonia Dvořák and  Géraud Wielick and Aleksandra Liashenko and Andrey Teterin.  The company danced Four Schumann Pieces for the first time in the Vienna Volksoper on 4 June 2022. For them, it was a brand new piece which they danced with appealing energy and freshness.

In the Future was created for the Scarpino Ballet Rotterdam in 1986,  a company that is even older than the Dutch National Ballet.  The piece was inspired by music that the Scottish composer David Byrne had written as a soundtrack for Fritz Lang's film Metropolis the previous year.  As striking as the music are the set, costume and lighting designs of Keso Dekker  Each dancer wears a garment that is green at the front and red at the back. The dancers pulsate to the music as if they were beams of light.  It is a perfect piece for the Junior Company which is now a completely different cohort from the one I saw in Amsterdam in 2018 and London in 2019.  The members who danced on 29 June were Luca Abdel-Nour, Koko Bamford, Lily Carbone, Mila Caviglia, Sven de Wilde, Lauren Hunter, Nicola Jones, Gabriel Rajah, Guillermo Torrijos, Louisella Vogt and Koyo Yamamoto.  They were as impressive as their predecessors and I look forward to watching them develop as a troupe and blossom as artists of the Dutch National Ballet and other leading companies.

Variations for Two Couples is one of van Manen's latest works.  It was created for Anna Tsygankova,  Matthew Golding, Igone de Jongh and Jozef Varga and first performed on 15 Feb 2012.  It is a very short piece that packs in music by Benjamin Britten, Einojuhani Rautavaara, Stefan Kovács Tickmayer and Astor Piazzolla.   The programme states that for van Manen it was all about the personalities of the dancers that he wished to draw out.  Varga danced the role that van Manen had created for him on 29 June. but instead of Tsygankova, Golding and de Jongh he was joined by Riho Sakamoto, Young Gyu Choi and Jessica Xuan.   Van Manen intended this to be a very understated ballet.   He said, "everything is 'low down' – even the dancers’ lifts."  That is echoed by Dekker's costumes and backdrop.  The result is a work of refinement and elegance.

There was an interval after Variations for Two Couples.   On returning to my seat I noticed that van Manen was sitting in my row.  Several of his fans were talking to him and one gave him a hug.   He stood up to allow me to pass and for a moment I felt impelled to introduce myself and shake his hand.  However, the curtain was about to rise and I let the moment slip.  The very next day my friend Gita Mistry button-holed him in the lobby of the National Opera and Ballet auditorium as we gathered for the Gala.  She introduced me to him and  I had the opportunity to tell him how much I had enjoyed his work over the last 50 years.  However, Gita went one better and actually took a selfie of herself with the great man. In her interview with Judith Mackrell, Laura Esquivel compared the art of the chef with that of the choreographer (see Like Water for Chocolate  23 July 2022). Gita offered to cook for van  Manen and as she is an artist in spice he would enjoy one of the best meals of his life were he ever to take her up on the offer.

Solo danced by Henrik Erikson, Alessandro Giaquinto and Matteo Miccini of the Stuttgart Ballet won the loudest and most sustained applause of the evening.  It is a very short piece set to Bach's Violin Partita. Keeping up with the music requires great virtuosity and equal stamina.  It was danced with energy, flair and fluidity. - an altogether brilliant display.

The first time I saw Concertante it was performed by Northern Ballet.   I wrote in Terpsichore:

"What can one say about a masterpiece? Especially when there is a YouTube video of the great man himself discussing his ballet. According to the clip van Manen staged the work for the Nederlands Dans Theater junior company (Dans Theater 2). He spoke very highly of the Leeds dancers (Bateman, Batley, Leebolt, Contadini, Lori Gilchrist, Nicola Gervasi, Prudames and Isaac Lee-Baker) as well he might for they were good."

The video to which I referred was an interview with van Manen in Leeds on 6 June 2013.   I have seen performances of the work by other companies since then and it never ceases to impress me. Floor Eimers said that Concedrtante brings out the best in her and that seems also to be the case with other dancers.  There is something compelling in Frank Martin's music, Kekko's designs and of course the choreography,   This was the last work of the van Manen season and it was danced with verve by Nina Tonoli, Timothy van Poucke, Jingjing Mao, Martin ten Kortenaar, Lore Zonderman, Jan Spunda, Khayla Fitzpatrick and Conor Walmsley.

The evening had begun under the baton of Matthew Rowe, a compatriot and (I believe) an old boy of St Paul's School.  It ended under that baton of Northern Ballet's Director of Music, Jonathan Lo.  As he was led onto the stage the applause was deafening.   I felt very proud of him as well as Matthew Rowe.   But the loudest cheers and most vigorous clapping were reserved for van Manen himself.  They were in appreciation of the works that we had seen that night but also for his lifetime's achievement.

A Wonderful Evening - Northern Ballet's Mixed Bill 21 June 2014

I am very grateful to Mel for her excellent review of Northern Ballet's Mixed Programme (see Mel Wong "Kenneth Tindall - The Architect of Ballet" 21 June 2014). She saw the show on Wednesday at the start of the company's short season at the Stanley and Audrey Burton Theatre.  I saw it on Saturday night at the end of the run and loved it too. It was a wonderful evening. For me Concerto 622 was the most joyful of the three works, Concertante the most elegant and The Architect the most thrilling.  

I think I am more of a Lubovitch fan than Mel. Concerto 622 was just my cup of tea. I was close to tears for most of that performance, partly because of the intrinsic beauty of the ballet and partly because of the connotations in that it reminded me of Jerome Robbins's Dances at a Gathering which I will always associate with Antoinette Sibley.  In my view the most beautiful part of the ballet was the Adagio. This was a pas de deux by Giuliano Contadini and Matthew Koon. I don't have a video of those dancers but you can appreciate the choreography from this video which has been uploaded by Lubovitch. I particularly liked the butterfly sequence.  Others may have had other relationships in mind but the tenderness between those dancers put me in mind of my 3 year old grandson manqué and his doting dad.

Like Mel I am a van Manen fan and have been for many years. Almost a contemporary of Maurice Béjart, John Cranko, Peter Darrell and Kenneth MacMillan he is the last of the great choreographers of my youth. I had the good fortune of seeing him take a curtain call at the first performance of the Dutch National Ballet Junior Company last November. A van Manen ballet is rather like Palladian architecture. There is order and proportion in the choreography, costumes and score. For this work Northern Ballet deployed its stars, Martha Leebolt and Tobias Batley, who were well supported by Giuliano Contadini, Hannah Bateman, Jessica Morgan, Nicola Gervasi, Abigail Prudames and Isaac Lee-Baker.

The tour de force was The Architect by Kenneth Tindall. This is the third of his works that I have seen this year and it is by far the best (see my review of Luminous Jun*cture  in Angelic - Northern Ballet's Mixed Bill 9 June 2013 and mention of Bitter Earth in More Things I do for my Art - Autumn Gala of Dance and Song 30 Sept 2013). It is a multi layered ballet that has to be seen more than once to be understood fully. It can best be described as a creation myth that somehow combines Genesis with genetics. There was the story of the forbidden fruit and the fall of man but there was also a double helix and 4 sets of characters on each male dancer left breast which seemed to me to be DNA sequences from where I was sitting. The choreography was spectacular as was the dancing and Christopher Giles's set was out of this world. There were what appeared to be three bamboo canes each with a living being inside it and a lattice structure like the Eiffel tower through which the dancers crashed and dived towards the end.

As I said above The Architect is a ballet that has to be seen more than once and probably many times to be understood properly. Happily we will all get the chance to see the ballet and study it as often as we need because it is to be filmed. Two weeks before the première of The Architect Tindall and Bateman appealed for funding for the filming on Kickstarter (see "Tindall's Architect - How to Get a Piece of the Action - Literally" 7 June 2014) and I am glad to say that they met their target with just hours to spare ("They made it" 20 June 2014). I an proud to say that both Mel and I put £10 each into the pot and I for one am looking forward to the result.

Kenneth Tindall - The Architect of Ballet

Well, this is certainly exciting! My first contribution for this blog will be a review of the most impactful ballets I have seen so far this year, danced by one of my favourite companies!  I was one of the privileged audience members at Northern Ballet's Company HQ on Wednesday 18th July 2014 to watch the first cast of the 'Mixed Programme 2014/15'. It was also the premier of Kenneth Tindall's 'The Architect' (more on that in a second!) and turned out to be one of the most special and memorable nights of my life.

Before I get on to reviewing the three pieces in the programme (Lar Lubovitch's Concerto Six Twenty-Two, Hans van Manen's Concertante and Tindall's The Architect) I have to say that the company are in superb athletic form right now. It was a real thrill to be able to see them up close in the intimate setting of the Stanley & Audrey Burton Theatre, and its stripped back atmosphere added extra impact to the lighting and set designs used so cleverly in the 3 pieces. This programme really highlights the gifts and strengths of the Northern Ballet and gives them access to work that is beyond the usual boundaries of narrative classical ballet. It also provided moments of real maturity for the younger dancers, particularly Kevin Poeung who clearly put so much GRAFT into his performance in The Architect. The performances I saw last night were just as thought-provoking as dance theatre but lost no amount of classicism or emotion. I feel incedibly proud of  this Yorkshire-based company, they really do belong on the world's stage and this programme will hopefully be their launchpad onto it (they will be bringing the programme to the ROH Linbury in 2015)

Concerto Six Twenty-Two

I'm not personally much of a Lar Lubovitch fan, I find his movement language just a little too on the safe, bland side and many elements of this piece don't really grab and sustain a hold on my attention. It didn't generate in me much of a response above critical appreciation of his work, the mental assimilation of the techniques he used and of course the appreciation for the dancers.

However, even though this piece isn't to my taste the company performed it with such lightness and carefree exuberance. It genuinely was a joy to see them dance and they all managed to convey a sense of true joy at dancing with each other. Hannah Bateman (aka Mrs Tindall!) and Dreda Blow in particular were visions of springtime loveliness. Concerto is a natural fit for the elvish and sprightly Rachael Gillespie, she looked like she was having the time of her life dancing it. Matthew Topliss deserves credit for maintaing the energy and elevation in the Allegro/Rondo pieces and the Adagio PDD between Guiliano Contadini and Matthew Koon was my highlight from this piece.

Concertante

I'm a big fan of Hans van Manen, Nederlands Dance Theatre and Het National Ballet, so I had very high expectations for the performance of this piece. Which, as it turns out were actually exceeded! Contemporary pieces like these that are the lifeblood of European companies can be hard for British ballet companies to master. Not only is the movement itself more extreme than typical classical ballet repertoire, it also requires a subtle intensity, as apposed to 'mannered' performance. Mastering these elements make the diffference between a piece that is well presented to a piece that is performed authentically and hits the mark.

Watching the Northern Ballet dancers performing Concertante I found myself being pulled in, so that I no longer had any awareness of where I was or even WHO these dancers were. It was a prime example of ability of art to be a catalyst for complete transcendence, and the company carried this all the way into and beyond Tindall's Architect. The movement language in this piece is gorgeous, and very 'me', and my favourite moments were 'That' duet between Tobias Batley and Hannah Bateman and Martha Leebolt's duet with Giuliano Contadini. Bateman mesmorised me with her challenging, questioning eyes. Batley was everything that you love and everything that you hate about intense relationships. Leebolt, for me, is so much more than a dance actress and in Contadini she had the perfect partner to really express her true artistic ability.

The Architect

Anyone who follows me on Twitter will know that I have been raving on and on about this piece for weeks!  Kenneth Tindall is a true creative, his ideas and movement language are incredibly unique in the UK and the sheer facility of the Northern Ballet dancers gives him full reign for making his creativity a reality. In Architect, I was given everything I wanted and more! I spoke about being pulled into Concertante, well with The Architect Tindall and the 9 dancers performing it reached out with their own hands and pulled me in to the piece from my insides. They didn't let go, either, I'm still having random conversations with myself about some of the themes and ideas that I've seen in the piece and I still feel that I was privy to a very great 'Becoming' (to borrow from Thomas Harris!).

Movement-wise Tindall threw so many contrasting but highly effective influences into the piece and I've never seen the company dance, interact and perform anything like it before. He gave them a truly 'meaty' piece of work, pushing them to their limits as atheltic dancers and as emotional creatures. The set and the lighting design (Chrisopher Giles and Alastair West, respectively) were spectacular, carving out space and increasing the intensity, and perfectly integrated with the movement language to holistically make this piece gobsmacking. Costume-wise, who knew a unitard could be so impactful and emotive?! The spinal designs on the backs of the male dancers really connected with me, and the visceral red 'wounds' or wombs on the backs of the female dancers' costumes provocatively hinted at what was to become clear in the piece.

Brutal, ravishingly beautiful and completley immersive, Architect has really cemented Tindall's position as my favourite British choreographer and I hope that one day I will create and dance in works that have a fraction of his impact. This piece was a genuinely collabrative effort, TIndall sculpted his dancers into a new kind of living, breathing organism. All 9 dancers (Hannah Bateman, Martha Leebolt, Tobias Batley, Kevin Poeung, Dreda Blow, Guiliano Contadini, Joseph Taylor, Jessica Morgan, Nicola Gervasi) deserve special mentions, without them all it wouldn't have been what it was!

Tempestuous Choice - Amsterdam or Leeds?

As I mentioned in "Amsterdam or London?" earlier today the Dutch National Ballet are dancing "The Tempest" between the 18 and 29 June. Having seen Pastor's Romeo and Juliet two weeks ago I would love to see it but I come only travel to the Netherlands on a weekend. I have tickets for Northern Ballet's Mixed Bill on the 21 June 2014 which includes van Manen's Concertante as well as a new work by Kenneth Tindall and on the 29 there is Northern Ballet Academy's Tenth Anniversary Gala. Also, and don't laugh too loud, I am dancing myself on the 28 June in Northern Ballet Academy's end of term show in the same theatre as the Mixed Bill and the Gala.

Northern Ballet danced Concertante last year and I loved it (see "Angelic - Northern Ballet's Mixed Bill" 9 June 2013). Since then I have twice seen the wonderful dancers of the Dutch National Ballet Junior Company dance Kwintet and I have even seen the great choreographer take a bow at the Stadsshouwburg with my very own eyes (see "And can they fly! The Dutch National Ballet Junior Company at Covent Garden" 30 May 2014 and "The Junior Company of the Dutch National Ballet - Stadsshouwburg Amsterdam 24 Nov 2013" 25 Nov 2013). I very much want to see it again.

The last performance of The Tempest in Amsterdam coincides with Northern Ballet Academy's Tenth Anniversary Gala. I am a pupil at that Academy as well as one of its Friends (see "Realizing a Dream" 12 Sept 2013) and I became a Friend after seeing its great teachers at work at the Northern Ballet Open Day on the 16 Feb 2014. Like every other company's ballet school our Academy trains the very best of the best for the stage but it also reaches out to old ladies like me (and from time to time the occasional sprightly gentleman) as well as students whose movement and expression are challenged in many other ways. It is a great institution and I would urge everyone to consider supporting it as a Friend.

The gala on the 29 June sounds fun:

• a "decadent" afternoon tea (what can they be putting in the tea or adding to the butties?)
• a gala performance by the CAT students (if you want to know what "CAT stands for ask the Academy and not me); and finally
• a drinks reception.

Quite a lot for £50 I think you will agree.

And the 28 June is my big day.  Vlad the Lad and his mum and dad are travelling up from London to see me. Having been thrilled by the magnificent Michaela DePrince on Thursday and being besotted by Ballet Black's wonderful dancers I am afraid my darling girl is in for something of an anticlimax when she sees me on stage. But never mind! We shall be dancing to some lovely music by Shostakovich (the soundtrack from the Soviet film the Return of Maxim). It is something I never dreamed would ever happen to me. To dance on the same stage where I have seen Martha Leebolt, Tobias Batley, Sarah Kundi, Cira Robinson ......

However, I will be back in Amsterdam for Swan Lake in September and Jewels and Cool Britannia next year. If I can only navigate my way to the Friends page on the Dutch National Ballet site I will gladly subscribe 50 euros to become their Friend too.

Angelic - Northern Ballet's Mixed Bill

Last Thursday, in the second interval of the transmission of Swan Lake, Valery Gergiev described Tchaikowsky as the greatest ballet composer ever. A lot of folk would go along with that including me but Aaron Copland is not far behind. Copland, unlike Tchaikowsky, can bring tears to my eyes. One of my favourite ballet scores is Appalachian Spring. It was commissioned for the great Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham in 1944. I have never seen that ballet on stage but here is the next best thing: some remarkable footage of the original production shot without sound upon which the music has been overlaid.

I heard that score again and was close to tears last night in Mark Godden's "Angels in the Architecture" danced by Northern Ballet as the first part of their Mixed Programme at the Stanley & Aubrey Burton Theatre.  Although Godden's choreography is very different his subject matter is the same, namely the pioneers of early America.

Appalachian Spring incorporates the lovely Shaker hymn Simple Gifts:

'Tis the gift to be simple,
'tis the gift to be free,
'tis the gift to come down
where we ought to be,
and when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gained
to bow and to bend we shan't be ashamed,
to turn, turn, will be our delight
till by turning, turning we come round right."

Godden's work focused on the Shakers, a sect which is now almost extinct. I am sorry they have gone because they seem to have had much in common with Quakers. Like us they adhered to pacifism, integrity and simplicity.  A manifestation of their integrity and simplicity is the elegant furniture that they produced and it was that rather than Frank Ticheli's score which inspired the title.  According to the programme the title  alludes to a quotation by Thomas Merton that "the peculiar grace of a Shaker chair is due to the fact that an angel might come and sit on it."

Comparing the film of Appalachian Spring to a clip of Ballet Memphis's production of Angels you can see the similarities in the sets, the props, the costumes and even the choreography. Graham waved the long skirts of the female dancers sexily which Godden extended into a sort of 17th century cancan. I am not sure that the pioneers would have done that - particularly not the Shakers who encouraged abstinence even though they had a reputation for wild and exuberant worship - but it worked balletically.

The dancers were Pippa Moore, Ashley Dixon, Martha Leebolt, John Hull, Teresa Saavedra-Bordes, Graham Kotowich, Rachael Gillespie, Matthew Topliss, Mariana Rodrigues, Sebastian Loe, Abigail Prudames and Matthew Broadbent.  Interestingly Godden collaborated with Paul Daigle to design the set which was woven into the choreography as were Daigle's costumes. Perhaps all choreographers try to do that but this was hands on.

The audience was on a high after Angels. We were brought down to earth with a thud by the opening bars of Ólafur Arnalds  "Brotsjór" in Kenneth Tindall's "Luminous Jun-cture" and the stiff arm and deathly w,hite face of (I think, apologies if I got it wrong) Victoria Sibson poking through the curtain. A very interesting score which also incorporated "Recomposed", "Luminous" and "Sarajevo" by Max Richter and Hans Zimmer's "Time" overlaid by a diatribe against greed and war that I just can't place for the time being. The other dancers in Luminous Junc-ture were Dreda Blow, Julie Charlet, Hannah Bateman, Tobias Batley, Benjamin Mitchell, Kevin Poeung, Giuliano Contadini and the lighting.  I say the lighting because Tindall wrote:

"My inspiration is always movement in its style and intention. I hope to use the lighting as if it were another dancer on the stage. That, coupled with the music, will help Luminous Junc-ture be a physically emotive, inventive and atmospheric work."

And so it was. He did indeed make clever use of the lighting not only to track movement but also as a prop. The descending light fittings at the end were a good example. You can see some of the choreography from the rehearsal tracks on the ballet web page.

A special word for the young costume designer Emma Guilfoyle who has a special YouTube clip that can also be accessed from the web page. Her costumes gave the work a retro-feel - something that might have been performed by Michael Somes, Moira Shearer or Pamela May immediately after the second world war - and the voiceover was definitely 1940s. No bad thing as the war was the cauldron in which modern the British ballet was forged.

The last work in the triple bill was Hans van Manen's classic Concertante. What can one say about a masterpiece? Especially when there is a YouTube video of the great man himself discussing his ballet. According to the clip van Manen staged the work for the Nederlands Dans Theater junior company (Dans Theater 2). He spoke very highly of the Leeds dancers (Bateman, Batley, Leebolt, Contadini, Lori Gilchrist, Nicola Gervasi, Prudames and Isaac Lee-Baker) as well he might for they were good.

This was my first visit to the Northern Ballet's new home and I was very impressed. Being a Mancunian I regretted their departure from my hometown but I can see they have a good home now with a well equipped theatre with most of the things that a company could possibly need. But I am sure they could do with some more.  There are many ways you can help them.   For instance, you could become a friend or patron, you could sponsor a dancer, run with the Northern Ballet on Bastille Day or, indeed, you could sponsor my long suffering dance teacher who is taking part in the run.

Further Information
BBC Radio 4 "Tales from the Stave, Appalachian Spring" 11 June 2013, 11:30
Jane Lambert  "The Junior Company of the Dutch National Ballet - Stadsshouwburg Amsterdam 24 Nov 2013" 25 Nov 2013