Dutch National Ballet 2023/24 season opens with Four Temperaments, featuring works by four generations of top choreographers: George Balanchine and Hans van Manen, and world premieres by Ted Brandsen and Juanjo Arqués.
The Dancing Dutch programme features works by important choreographers of today: Hans van Manen, David Dawson and Milena Sidorova, and for the first time Dutch National Ballet is dancing a ballet by Jiří Kylián: Wings of Wax. Another programme with works by various (contemporary) choreographers will be danced by the Junior Company. Their anniversary programme 10 will tour the Netherlands with works by young choreographers like Joseph Toonga and Wubkje Kuindersma.
In addition to programmes of modern works, Dutch National Ballet is also reviving the full-length ballets Giselle and Raymonda. Raymonda premiered with great success in 2022 and now returns as a major December classic. The production Giselle has now become an unmissable work within HNB’s classical repertoire. Both are classics to which deputy artistic director Rachel Beaujean has given a completely unique interpretation that is appropriate to today. A third full-length ballet, which stars a woman and is created by a female choreographer, is Frida by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa – an ode to the iconic artist Frida Kahlo.
The Company also presents two of the most successful and imaginative ballets by Russian choreographer Alexei Ratmanksy, the most important classical ballet choreographer of our time: Firebird and The Fairy’s Kiss, both to music by Stravinsky.
The ballet season will end festively with a grand gala performance in which more than 250 dancers will make their appearance.
Ted Brandsen, Director of Dutch National Ballet:
“The key word this season is ‘looking forward’. This applies to the creations of the modern grandmasters and the new works by young talents, but also to the famous classics in the programming. By creating our own new productions of treasures from the classical repertoire, these works are kept alive for new generations. This makes us an important treasurer.
Opera and ballet join forces for the fourth time to open the Opera Forward Festival with Oedipus Rex / Antigone. Crime and punishment take centre stage in this double bill of Igor Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex (1927) and the world premiere of Samy Moussa’s Antigone (2024). This new production by British director and choreographer Wayne McGregor brings together the worlds of classical tragedy, contemporary dance and 20th- and 21st-century music.
Next season, the Dutch National Ballet’s Junior Company is celebrating its tenth anniversary – partly with a festive touring programme. Dutch National Opera & Ballet continues to invest heavily in talent development and artistic experimentation.
In addition, the opening of the newly renovated small theatre, Studio Boekman creates more room for reaching new and diverse audiences. The programming in the new theatre offers opportunities to explore the boundaries of opera and ballet. Under the name Fonds 21 EXTRA, Fonds 21 will support programming contributing to making opera and ballet more accessible to a new generation of culture lovers.
For more information visit: Dutch National Ballet