Het Nationale Ballet opened its 2026–27 season at Amsterdam’s Nationale Opera & Ballet on 10 September with Legacies, a four-part programme connecting works from ballet history with a new creation by Canadian choreographer Kirsten Wicklund. At the centre of the evening is Wicklund’s world premiere Monumento—not “Monumentum”—set to Willem Jeths’ Monument to a Universal Marriage. The programme runs until 27 September and places this contemporary Dutch composition alongside ballets by George Balanchine, Hans van Manen and Toer van Schayk. Conducted by Koen Kessels, Het Balletorkest provides the musical foundation for the evening, with Cappella Amsterdam joining for the closing Requiem.
Jeths composed Monument to a Universal Marriage in response to a defining moment in Dutch social history: the first same-sex marriage, conducted in Amsterdam in 2001. Written ten years later, the approximately 14-minute work is scored for two vocal soloists, clarinet and string ensemble. Its flexible vocal writing permits different pairings—soprano and alto or mezzo-soprano, tenor and baritone, or soprano and baritone—making the work’s musical design closely aligned with its subject of plural and inclusive forms of partnership. For Monumento, the vocal parts are performed by emerging singers from De Nationale Opera Studio. Wicklund’s choreography develops this premise through changing gender configurations, extending Jeths’ reflection on marriage into the physical and spatial relationships between dancers.
The premiere staging presents five dancers in silver- and gold-toned unitards, framed by two singers positioned on opposite sides of the stage. Costumes are by Tatyana van Walsum and lighting by Wijnand van der Horst. Rather than employing elaborate scenery, the production uses a black curtain that gradually rises and falls, regulating the depth of the stage and the amount of light entering the space. This concentrated theatrical environment directs attention towards the interaction of bodies, voices and orchestral texture. A review of the opening night described the choreography as a collective as well as individual meditation, shaped by an intentionally unresolved visual balance: the five-person ensemble avoids fixed hierarchy while allowing dancers to observe, approach and separate from one another.
Within Legacies, Monumento forms part of a broader dialogue between inheritance and renewal. The programme begins with Balanchine’s Symphony in C, set to Bizet, followed by Van Manen’s 2001 quartet Simple Things, which combines music by Guy Klucevsek and Alan Bern with works by Joseph Haydn and Pēteris Vasks. The closing work, Van Schayk’s 1990 *Requiem* to Mozart’s Mass for the Dead, returns to the stage in the year of the choreographer’s ninetieth birthday. Dancers including Riho Sakamoto, Maia Makhateli, Timothy van Poucke, Young Gyu Choi, Salome Leverashvili, Anna Ol and others appear across the programme; Sakamoto received the Alexandra Radius Prize at the premiere. In this setting, Jeths’ composition provides a contemporary musical perspective within an evening that considers how ballet repertory is preserved, reinterpreted and expanded.
Composers in the crosshairs of our attention