The Dutch National Ballet celebrates Hans van Manen’s 90th birthday with a festival and a tour. During the Hans van Manen Festival, the international dance world will gather to pay tribute to the great master of Dutch ballet. With the Hans van Manen 90 tour – which took place last May – the company presents three jewels from his extensive oeuvre.

Choreographer Hans van Manen (1932) has been a great source of inspiration to dancers and audiences for years. He is internationally recognised as one of the great masters of contemporary ballet. All his ballets – more than 150 – have an unmistakable signature. Clarity of structure, refined simplicity and an aversion to unnecessary decorative frills are the core elements of his highly musical choreographies, which, without becoming anecdotal, always revolve around human relationships.

For his creation, Van Manen was inspired, within the others, by Vivo e giusto uit “Mouvements Eclatants” van Carlos Micháns which will be a part of the program ‘Dances with Piano’. 

Dances with Piano will have its Dutch premiere in this Hans van Manen Festival. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote in response to the ballet’s reception in Düsseldorf: “A whole house full of people who had a small lump in their throats and did not know what to do with their applause, with those sensations of happiness pressing outwards, beauty and melancholy that every great Van Manen ballet leaves behind.”

Other works at the festival: ‘Goldrush Concerto by Jacob ter Veldhuis and Symphonieën der Nederlanden by Louis Andriessen.