At Dutch Doubles 2018 by the Dutch National Ballet, choreographers are collaborating with other artists for the second time. The chemical reaction between Wende Snijders and Annabelle Lopez Ochoa almost blows up the formula.
BAM! The audience jumps up. BAM!"It had to take 11 years for me to make something here again?", choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa seems to be saying. The Belgian/Colombian is making her own way as a choreographer with an impressive, international career. It was about time she came to make a major work in the Netherlands.
And again BAM! With huge bangs, Wende Snijders' band heralds Last Resistance in. Consequently, there is some resistance from the older generation ('the music is too loud', 'it's too show-like') but Last Resistance manages to win over the general public in the programme Dutch Doubles 2018.
Scapino may be jealous
The mission of Dutch Doubles is to collaborate with artists from other disciplines. Lopez Ochoa chose Wende Snijders. Because the singer-songwriter has a lot of charisma, according to the choreographer, she felt a large group of dancers was needed. Last Resistance has thus become a Maurice Béjart-like mega spectacle that wipes the floor with ballet conventions. The Scapino Ballet Rotterdam, where Lopez Ochoa danced, might envy it.
Changing the world, that's what Wende and Annabelle want. That is why the group of some 30 dancers start and end in a row, at the front of the stage. With very simple movements, they energise the thunderous music. In group work, you often see young choreographers obediently mix up formations of dancers, to a more or less existing idiom of movements. But Lopez Ochoa does a reset: there is no dogma, she simply performs dance in response to Snijders' six combative songs. Sometimes dancers have to come and do some tricks for no reason, but you take that grateful gesture to the top company for granted.
Wende herself, meanwhile, builds a party on stage, challenging the classically conditioned dancers to loosen up. It is stunning that the two outsiders, Snijders and Lopez Ochoa manage to get the ensemble so involved in this dance story of strength and compassion. They have succeeded in changing the world, at least for now on the stage of National Opera & Ballet.
Impernanence
Was this the only success of Dutch Doubles? No, there is a heaven-defying harpist, Remy van Kesteren, who was given carte blanche to compose an entire piece of music for orchestra and additional ensemble. Halfway through Impernanence all the various experimental impulses and musical influences come together in lyrical adagio dance. Then everything takes on more colour and meaning. Choreographer Ernst Meisner has dancers as Igone de Jongh, Martin ten Kortenaar, Maia Makhateli and young Salome Leverashvili skillfully beamed.
Two and Only and Déjà vu
The pas de deux Two and Only by Wubkje Kuindersma to music by Michael Benjamin is evocative and original. However, it has been added to the programme as a substitute for new work by Hans van Manen. And Hans van Manen, what would the Netherlands do without him? Déjà vu (the title cannot refer to already well-known Hans van Manen movements, as the pas de deux is over 20 years old) is set to the well-known Fratres by Arvo Pärt. In this duet by Van Manen, too, everything is balanced and that is what ballet is essentially about. That, and developing your own dance language and continuing to reinvent it.
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