Hans van Manen (11 July 1932 – 17 December 2025) was regarded worldwide as one of the greatest choreographers in classical ballet. He created a total of 150 ballets for the Dutch National Ballet, the Dutch Opera Ballet, the Nederlands Dans Theater and various foreign companies, including Great Fugue (1971), Sarcasm (1981) and Simple Things (2001). Van Manen has worked with renowned dancers such as Alexandra Radius and Han Ebbelaar, Rachel Beaujean and Igone de Jongh. He has received dozens of awards at home and abroad, including the Benois de la Danse Lifetime Achievement Award (2013), the Erasmus Prize (2000) and the appointment as Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres (2017). He was also appointed Officer in the Order of Orange Nassau and Commander in the Order of the Netherlands Lion.
In 2023, we interviewed him about his six insights on life.
Insight 1: Growing old is more about happiness than wisdom
‘Am I speaking to 18-year-old Hans van Manen?“ my internist said recently. She gives me a thorough check-up every year, but there’s nothing wrong with me. That’s lucky, because I’ve never been averse to drugs, I love wine and food, and I’ve smoked a lot all my life – yes, even as a dancer. If it had started to bother me, I would have stopped immediately, but my lungs are perfectly fine. I'll be 90 in July, but I'm not concerned about my age at all – I'm doing great, so why should I be? Henk and I rarely talk about death, and when we do, it's usually in the form of a joke. I don't know what tomorrow will bring, but today I feel great.
Of course, some friends have died in recent years. But I lost most of them back in the 1980s, during the HIV epidemic. It was a terrible and worrying time for homosexuals. No one knew anything about the disease, so there was a lot of panic. Homosexuals were condemned because, in the beginning, people thought that only we could get AIDS. As if it were someone's own fault. But some were just unlucky enough to draw a bad lot in this lottery.
Henk and I had an open relationship, but we were lucky enough never to contract it. That was different in our circle of friends; around thirty people died before medicines were developed. Time and again we heard: “So-and-so has it too.” Oh no, him too? If someone one of us had been with later turned out to have AIDS, you'd give them a squeeze. So you could say we slipped through the eye of the needle.‘
Insight 2: Passion can shape your life
‘By the age of seven, I was already convinced that I wanted to dance. I have no idea why; there was no television yet, so I had no role models at the time. My mother, brother and I lived on Marnixstraat in Amsterdam, so I would sometimes peek inside the Stadsschouwburg theatre. I also did errands for the small hotels and nightclubs in the neighbourhood, and sometimes saw artists rehearsing.
I listened to classical concerts in the Concertgebouw on the radio and when my mother and brother weren't home, I would perform between the sliding doors and pretend to receive applause afterwards. Apparently, I realised that you could do something like that for a living, in front of an audience, and that you had to take a bow afterwards. I loved dancing so much physically, the pleasure I got from it was addictive.
Due to the Second World War, I did not finish primary school, and when the war was over, I did not want to return to school. My progressive mother arranged for me to get a job as an assistant to make-up artist and hairdresser Herman Michels at the Stadsschouwburg theatre, so that I could enter the world I had been dreaming of.
There I saw Sonia Gaskell's Ballet Recital; they performed for a month and I was there day and night, taking lessons from her. Starting in the profession at the age of 18 without any ballet training was still possible back then. It turned out I was good at pirouettes, which almost no one else could do at the time. Michels offered me the opportunity to continue working for him one evening a week, for the same salary. That was one of the great opportunities in my life.
Although I didn't have the ideal body for dancing, I did have the ideal brain, because I am visually oriented and also have a strong sense of rhythm. I only need to watch dancers and listen to the music to know what they should do. In 1957, I was commissioned by the municipality of Amsterdam to create a choreography: my debut. Party-oriented was awarded the State Prize for Choreography. That is how I became a choreographer, something I had always wanted to do because choreography is the most important thing in the world of dance.
I don't know why others are so enthusiastic about my ballets. I never think about that sort of thing. All I know is that I had to create a new ballet every time and hoped it would be successful, and it was. I did that 150 times. And now I've stopped because I've had enough. Done!
But my passion for dance is still strong. My ballets are performed all over the world. I regularly fly to places like the United States, Germany or somewhere in Europe to attend rehearsals for four days or so to dot the i's and cross the t's. Then I see my own ballet in a whole new way, because other fantastic dancers are performing it and weaving their own style into it. I add a bit of direction to that. Do I still get as much satisfaction from it? You bet I do!’
Insight 3: One good parent counts for two
‘There are photographs of my father with me and my brother Guus, who is five years older than me, at the station in Amstelveen. We lived there at the time. In those photographs, I am wearing a beautiful white blouse, because when we travelled to Amsterdam by train, we were dressed up nicely for the occasion.
My father died of tuberculosis when I was almost seven. He had been ill in bed for two years, and because of the risk of infection, my brother and I were only allowed to wave to him from the doorway. I don't remember anything about my father; really, only that he was lying in that bed. And the stories my mother Marga told me about him. But I never missed having a father. My mother did very well on her own.
My mother was German. She had met my father in Germany, and he took her to the Netherlands. She was an exceptionally nice woman with a great sense of humour. She could sing and play the guitar well and knew all the German songs from before the war by heart. In her early years in the Netherlands, she sang a lot in cafés. She gave us complete freedom, but if she said I had to be home by midnight, I listened to her – until I was 16, when I started doing my own thing.
The fact that I was attracted to boys was not an issue for her either. When I had just turned 15, she said she needed to talk to me. She had overheard Hansje talking about gay bars in the café where my brother performed as a jazz pianist. She asked me if I was homosexual. Yes, I replied, because I had known for years. “Does it bother you?” she asked. “No!” “I'm glad,” she said, and that was that. Actually, I've never really suffered from homophobia, discrimination or aggression. Maybe that's because I have a very big mouth. If someone called me names, I would shout back just as loudly. Because I knew I could run really fast – no one could ever catch me.
My friends were welcome at her place and always enjoyed having coffee with her. Even after we had broken up, they still came by because they enjoyed her company so much. And they were right; we shared a house for years: she had the front room, I had the back room.
My mother died in 1971, a year before I met Henk. For the six weeks before her death, she was on a ventilator and under morphine, so she couldn't talk anymore. Still, I drove to the hospital every morning to sit by her bed and chat with her. And then I would cry in the car before starting my day. It's such a shame that she never got to meet Henk. They would have gotten along so well.’
Insight 4: To achieve something, you sometimes have to endure hardship.
‘My neighbours Richard and Frieda and I were good at stealing. During the Second World War, we went out as often as possible to steal food or fuel. We found coal in shelters in Vondelpark, and sometimes we managed to chop down a tree somewhere so that we could heat our homes a little. We were also the first to dismantle the wooden blocks from the tram tracks, which we sold for a guilder each on the black market. We used the money to buy a boiled potato. A real treat.
During the hunger winter, we had almost nothing left to eat. Due to malnutrition, I developed oedema and my skin cracked open – huge holes in my legs. To close the wounds, my damaged legs had to be disinfected after the war in a bucket of hot water with a bar of soap and a bottle of peroxide. I had large scars, but you can't see them anymore.
We lived on the third floor of a building where prostitutes also worked. After liberation, many Canadians visited them. On the stairs of our apartment building, I found a pack of stencils. I opened it and found dozens of photos of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Hills of corpses, lorries and handcarts full of them. After the war, soldiers were given these photographs so that people could see what had happened there. I immediately realised that this was the most horrific thing I would ever see; I can still remember some of those images to this day.
Still, I wasn't affected by the war, nor did I suffer any trauma as a result. Because of the war, my generation basically skipped puberty; we grew up early. No nonsense, just get on with it, that was the prevailing mentality. Yes, that is something I did take away from it: a mentality of not whining or complaining. That came in handy in the dance world, because physiotherapists and masseurs didn't exist back then. Injuries? They didn't exist for me. I wanted to achieve something and did what was necessary to get there. I still have that discipline today.’
Insight 5: Conflicts must be resolved immediately
‘When ballet performances were recorded for television in the past and I noticed small mistakes that I absolutely did not want to see in the final cut – but the recording continued anyway – I would be incredibly naughty. I would deliberately walk right in front of the camera, ruining the shot and forcing them to redo it. That's how bad I used to be. Because, of course, it's very cheeky to do that. Still, I always had a good relationship with the directors. When I explained afterwards why I did it, they always understood.
Actually, I can't imagine anything that can't be solved with a good conversation. Of course, I have sometimes been too harsh with people I love, such as during rehearsals with my good friend and colleague Rachel Beaujean, who couldn't get a dance step right. I kept hammering away at her. I could see from her face that it was upsetting her. So when I got home, I immediately picked up the phone: “Sorry, darling, will you forgive me?” That way, I made up for it right away. You have to resolve arguments and conflicts immediately. Then you don't have to feel any regret or guilt.’
Insight 6: Living apart is beneficial for your relationship
‘Henk and I will soon have been together for fifty years. We have even always worked together; as a video master, he was responsible for the ballet recordings. No, that never caused any friction, because I minded my own business and he minded his. What's more, we had the same goal: to do everything we could for the art of dance.
We believe that the secret to such a long, happy relationship is that we live separately. This allows us to do our own things without being disturbed. Read or watch television in peace. Work. I think it's much healthier for a couple to have their own space. Because being together 24 hours a day takes its toll. You both have your own personalities and your own lives, your own friends. Sometimes you want to do something that the other person doesn't feel like doing.
Although we have an open relationship and Henk is twenty years younger than me, I have never been afraid that we would lose each other. We see each other every day, cook and eat together, and love the same things, such as art and music. We enjoy going to the theatre, the cinema, and concerts. But we also give each other a lot of freedom, based on a deep mutual trust that we will always be there for each other.’
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