Nederlands Dans Theater 2 (NDT2), one of the world’s most celebrated contemporary dance companies and founded in 1978 by the parent company Nederlands Dans Theater, last appeared at Edinburgh’s Festival Theatre in May 2014. The company focusses on dancers aged 18 – 23 who work with established choreographers to learn and perfect a ‘lexicon of dance languages’ and for two dates they are back with a bill of seven pieces, two of which have their UK première with this tour.
The giant black wheeled screens that shift and morph to the required backdrops for the first three of these pieces are almost like strange inhuman dancers themselves, such is their presence. Schubert, the first of the UK premières, is a technical pas de deux danced to Schubert’s String quintet in C – Adagio. This love duet creates exquisite shapes and doll like movements over its short duration that acts as a delightful sweetener to the treats that are to lie ahead.
The pace changes for Sad Case, a piece originally created for NDT1. Here sultry Latin sounds are saucily punctuated by wolf whistles as the dancers, like dusted white marble, come to life making angular and animalistic formations with disciplined abandon in this longer set. This is cheeky, mischievous, zany, sexual and hip twitchingly fabulous!
The next UK première is Some Other Time, a dramatic shadowy black clad duet with the female dancer in Dutch lace designed by Sol León and Paul Lightfoot. It is danced with a wide variety of pas de deux and solos to a range of music from among others Max Richter beautifully showing what can be the manic anguish of the eternal triangle.
mutual comfort with music from Milko Lazar is realised in a smoky atmosphere with a quartet of two androgynous couples who dance with extraordinary fluidity through their portrayal of shifting dynamics. As with the rest of the pieces, what looks like casual precision but is clearly colossal concentration, movements are perfectly synchronised with parts of the music.
Another short but this time fast paced ballet is Solo, a series of male solos created by award-winning choreographer Hans van Manen. It is danced with a beautiful graceful muscularity by the three dancers to Johann Sebastian Bach’s violin partita under atmospheric lighting from Joop Kaboort and stylish yet traditional costume from Keso Dekker with the underlying message of a single man ‘re-examining his place in the world’.
The show’s astonishing grin inducing finale is the hit creation Cacti from Swedish-born choreographer Alexander Ekman. This astonishing spectacle uses an eclectic mix of classical music including a new arrangement of Schubert’s Der Tod und das Mädchen while the full cast of 16 dancers become a human orchestra each with props of a white slab and of course a cactus! Dressed again in androgynous costumes, also from Ekman, with a distinct martial arts look the ensemble performs this unique concept to some spoken narration and under superb lighting from Tom Visser. The effect is quirky, funny, entrancing and well, just stunning!
NDT2 takes audiences on a series of emotional journeys where the narrative can be guessed at but what matters is the expression of the feelings within these narratives that come across with such force from these young dancers who have a maturity beyond their years. The stark backdrop allows this living festival of youth, beauty, physical prowess and skills to utterly shine in this wonderful experience and spectacle!
Friday 22 & Saturday 23 April at 7.30pm