Queen Máxima visits Nederlands Dans Theater

A royal visit

Photos: Joris-Jan Bos

We were very honoured to receive Queen Máxima in our home at Lucent Danstheater on Tuesday, March 16! She visited our company to talk with our Artistic Director Emily Molnar and Managing Director Willemijn Maas about how we are holding up during the corona pandemic, and how we continue to work on maintaining quality, creating interesting online programming and how we keep reaching our audiences.

Due to the corona pandemic, performances in The Netherlands and abroad have not or hardly been possible for a year now. As a result, NDT has looked for new ways to perform and reach the public. Film registrations and live streams of dance productions turned out to be a solution. The experience for both the dancers and the audience is different, but a broader and more international audience can be reached with these online performances. Furthermore, the time that became available through canceled performances is used for research and to invest in the development, creativity and inspiration of the dancers.

Queen Máxima talked with various employees of NDT about their experiences during the corona crisis, how they maintain the high quality of the company in this time, guarantee their artistic vision and show their work.

Our Artistic Director Emily Molnar guided Queen Máxima through the building, where she took a glimpse in our studio during morning ballet class, she visited the costume department where the Queen had an extensive conversation with the head of the atelier about designing and making the costumes for all performances, and the auditorium where our technical department showed her the set of an upcoming production and where our creative content maker as well as the director of our live streams elaborated on how we film our performances.

In the costume atelier

Donnie Duncan Jr. and Chloé Albaret performed a duet from 'Baby don't hurt me'

NDT 1 dancers Chloé Albaret and Donnie Duncan Jr. performed a duet from the piece ‘Baby don’t hurt me’ by Imre van Opstal and Marne van Opstal, after which some dancers got to speak with Queen Máxima about their experiences of performing without an audience and about their expectations for the future.

King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima speak by telephone, in video conversations and, where possible, during working visits with those involved about the consequences of the corona crisis and the efforts of so many to combat the pandemic. During the working visit, the generally applicable guidelines for combating the corona virus were observed.