Human beings can never fully realise their highest ambitions or their most tender desires. Even when fate places every opportunity within reach, they fail to grasp it. Confronted with happiness, they feel powerless and inadequate. Drawing on Benjamin Britten’s Diversions for Left Hand, Hans van Manen translated this theme into a theatrical context, shaping it as a pas de deux.

Maan in de Trapeze is a poetic circus fantasy. A man, known as “the Clown”, dreams of achieving the unattainable.

Together with Giovinezza (Rudi van Dantzig), Feestgericht (Hans van Manen) and Four Times Six (Benjamin Harkarvy), this ballet was performed during NDT’s very first programme in 1959, presented in Ostend.

Title De Maan in de Trapeze
Choreographer Hans van Manen
Year of Creation 1959
Duration 11.34 minutes
Premiere 5 september 959, Het Kurhaus, Ostende
Music Benjamin Britten - Divisions for Left Hand, Opus 28
Set design Franz Deckwitz
Costumes Franz Deckwitz

“The ballet is performed in a room 8 meters wide, 6 meters deep and 4 meters high with a door on the right and a digital clock up on the back wall that indicates the actual time. Situation is about aggression and violence.” – Hans van Manen

“An impressive, unusual expressionist ballet about aggression and violence.” - NRC ★★★★

“What a delightful surprise that Situation is performed again by the Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT) after fifty years.” - Trouw ★★★★★

“The restrained tension in Van Manen's later ballets is explosively present, his austere style of movement is still raw and direct here. "Situation is about aggression and violence," Van Manen said about the work. Great to see that he manages to elevates the duet form, in essence a relationship between two people, to a universal plan.” - Trouw ★★★★★

Title Situation
Choreographer Hans van Manen
Year of Creation 1970
Duration 33 minutes
Premiere 20 april 1970, Circustheater Scheveningen, The Hague
Music Soundrecordings for amateurfilms and soundchasers
Set design Jean-Paul Vroom
Costumes Jean-Paul Vroom

Grosse Fuge premièred at Nederlands Dans Theater in 1971. It was immediately considered a masterpiece and since it has been performed all over the world, both by NDT 1 and NDT 2 and by other companies.

The set design with its slowly rising line of light was created by Jean-Paul Vroom. Grosse Fuge is the only choreography for which Hans van Manen himself designed the costumes. Characteristic are the long 'Grahamskirts' of the men, brought into whirling movement by their invisible legs and the reiterated upward stretching arms, first with hands clenched, then again with fingers spread apart.

The music by Beethoven is unquestionably romantic, but also with a strong tension, sometimes agression in it. Both elements return in the choreography. Men and women dance in turn and together in unison quartets and ensemble, but also in solos, duets and pas de deux. The costumes and choreography of the women at one hand and the men on the other hand form a duet in itself, a contrast that nevertheless is being bridged in certain details.

Title Grosse Fuge
Choreographer Hans van Manen
Year of Creation 1971
Duration 24 minutes
Premiere 8 April 1971, Circustheater, Scheveningen (NDT 1) and 5 November 1987, AT&T Danstheater, The Hague (NDT 2)
Music Ludwig van Beethoven: Grosse Fuge, opus 133; Cavatina, opus 130
Set designJean-Paul Vroom
Costumes Hans van Manen
Light Joop Caboort

In reviews Fantasía (1993) has been described, among other things, as ‘one of the best pieces made for the company’. It is a typical Van Manen ballet: optimal expressiveness coupled with structural precision, simplicity and purity. It is a game of seduction between three women and three men. Van Manen set Fantasía to a choral prelude and a choral transcription of Busoni’s Bach piano adaption.

"A breathtaking pairing dance.." - Trouw (2012)

"A masterpiece to frame and give a place of honor in the treasure room of the memory." -  De Telegraaf (1996)

"A lovely immersion in ‘typical’ Van Manen-work: utter clear, no step too much, musically genius and ever that tension, yet filled with air." -  Trouw (2012)

Title Fantasía
Choreographer Hans van Manen
Year of Creation 1993
Duration 19 minutes
Premiere 15 april 1993, AT&T Danstheater, The Hague (NDT 1)
Music Johann Sebastian Bach: Chorale Prelude Ich ruf' zu Dir, BWV 639 Präludium in a-minor (Fantasie), BWV 922 Chorale Setting Nun kommt der Heiden Heiland, BWV 659
Set design & Costumes Keso Dekker
Light Joop Caboort

Polish Pieces by Hans van Manen explores the tension between the sexes. A group of six female dancers and a group of six male dancers are set in direct opposition to one another. When they come into contact, a series of duets emerges.

Title Polish Pieces
Choreographer Hans van Manen
Year of Creation 1995
Duration 20 minutes
Premiere 18 October 1990, AT&T Danstheater, The Hague (NDT 1) and 11 November 1994, AT&T Danstheater, The Hague (NDT 2)
Music Henryk-Mikolaj Górecki: Konzert für Klavier und Streichorchester opus 40 (1980), Drei Stücke im alten Stil, für Streichorchester(1963)
Set design & Costumes Keso Dekker
Light Joop Caboort

A surprising pas de deux by grand master Hans van Manen. For Van Manen, the meaning of the duet in dance is crystal clear: “a ballet for one dancer is a solo, a ballet for two dancers a story” [Balanchine]. Déjà Vu premiered during the Holland Festival in 1995. Set to music by Arvo Pärt, two black-clad dancers make a striking entrance from the wings. The tension between the two sexes is palpable, yet their sense of connection repeatedly comes to the fore.

"VVan Manen captures the essence of human relationships.". - NRC Handelsblad, 1995

"A virtuosic duet in which two dancers probe each other’s limits." - Het Parool, 2009

"In Déjà Vu from 1995, they move for more than ten minutes within a breathtaking field of tension between power struggle and intimate connection, phenomenally danced…" -  De Telegraaf, 2009

"Déjà Vu by Hans van Manen is and remains the textbook example of building dramatic tension within a highly distinctive signature". - Trouw, 2009

Title Déjà Vu
Choreographer Hans van Manen
Year of creation 1995
Duration 12 minuten
Premiere 1 juni 1995, AT&T Danstheater, Den Haag (NDT 2)
Music Arvo Pärt, Fratres for violin and piano (1980)
Set design & Costumes Keso Dekker
Light design Joop Caboort

Hans van Manen created Solo for three NDT 2 dancers who portray a single man reexamining his place in the world. The high pace movements on Bach’s violin partita require an extraordinary timing, and can therefore only be performed by the dancers interchanging one another.

"Solo splashes and swings and makes you chuckle at the scurrying feet, the raised arms as exclamation points, the flashy turns, the impending bent knees and the fun, the mischievous, the speed and momentum with which the NDT 2 dancers present this choreography." - NRC Handelsblad (1997)

“You can almost study every muscle and every minute difference, such as the three energetic boys in Solo (1997, Hans van Manen): the elegant Gregory Lau dances sharply, daredevil Helias Tur-Dorvault enhances Van Manen’s style athletically and water swift Miguel Duarte accentuates playful head nods and slaps on the thigh.” -  de Volkskrant ★★★★

Title Solo
Choreographer Hans van Manen
Year of Creation 1997
Duration 7 minutes
Premiere 16 January 1997, Lucent Danstheater, The Hague (NDT 2)
Music Johann Sebastian Bach: Partita nr. 1 for violin solo in D minor BWV 1002: Correnta and Double (presto) - violist: Sigiswald Kuijken
Set design & Costumes Keso Dekker
Light Joop Caboort

The Old Man and Me is Hans van Manen's third duet for NDT III. Earlier he created Evergreens (1991) and Different Partners (1993). This newest creation, named after a song by bluesrock singer J.J. Cale, is danced by Sabine Kupferberg and Gérard Lemaitre.

Van Manen choreographed this duet specifically for these two dancers, placing the clownesque and the dramatic in direct opposition. The starting point was a simple form: a bench. With it, he explores how a story can be told using minimal means, carried by musicality and craftsmanship.

The choreography unfolds to three contrasting musical pieces: The Old Man and Me by J.J. Cale, Circus Polka by Igor Stravinsky, and the Andante from Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23. In a sixteen-minute duet, humour, memory and resignation are interwoven. Rather than relying on virtuosic technique, the work demands great physical and theatrical control — a challenge Kupferberg and Lemaitre fully embrace.

“Van Manen gives old dancers wings.” — NRC (1996)

“Van Manen still surpasses himself with The Old Man.” — Trouw (1996)

Title The Old Man and Me
Choreographer Hans van Manen
Year of Creation 1996
Duration 14 minutes
Premiere 29 February 1996, AT&T Danstheater, The Hague (NDT 3)
Music J.J. Cale: The Old Man and Me (1973), Igor Stravinsky: Circus Polka (1942), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Pianoconcert nr. 23 in A Majeur, KV 488, Adagio (1786)
Set design & Costumes Keso Dekker
Light Joop Caboort

Kleines Requiem is a work for seven dancers by NDT 1. For this piece, Hans van Manen chose music by the Polish composer Henryk Mikołaj Górecki (Kleines Requiem für eine Polka), which was composed on commission for the Holland Festival and premiered there in 1993 by the Schönberg Ensemble under the direction of Reinbert de Leeuw. Three couples dance their sensual and melancholic duets in constantly shifting combinations. When a furious polka suddenly erupts, all six merge into a single, swirling movement. At its premiere in 1996, the piece was hailed as one of the highlights of Van Manen’s already highly impressive oeuvre.

“Van Manen moves with a dramatic and deeply moving requiem” - De Volkskrant (1996)

Title Kleines Requiem
Choreographer Hans van Manen
Year of creation 1996
Duration 20 minutes
Premiere 14 November 1996, Lucent Danstheater, Hague (NDT 1)
Music Henryk Mikolaj Górecki; Kleines Requiem für eine Polka, Opus 66 [1993] for piano and 13 instruments, movement I. Tranquillo; III. Allegro - deciso assai; IV . Adagio cantabile
Rehearsal directors Sol León and Paul Lightfoot
Set design & costumes Keso Dekker
Light Joop Caboort