Het Nationale Ballet

The Dutch National Ballet will tour with two acclaimed classics of contemporary dance art: Hans van Manen's romantic Four Schumann Pieces and Alexei Ratmansky's poetic The Fairy's Kiss. 

Four Schumann Pieces has become one of Hans van Manen's most popular and frequently performed ballets since its premiere in 1975. It was originally created for the British Royal Ballet with a challenging lead role for then ballet star Anthony Dowell. Van Manen wanted to create a choreography that for once did not focus on ‘the eternal ballerina’, but rather on the ‘ballerino’. Surrounded by five dance couples, we see this male soloist go through different emotional stages, after which he is ultimately left alone. This gives the abstract choreography a romantic and melancholy charge after all.
 

Hans van Manen and Alexei Ratmansky: abstract versus narrative

The starting point for Alexei Ratmansky's The Fairy's Kiss is Stravinsky's Le baiser de la fée. Stravinsky, in turn, was inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale The Ice Queen. A boy is saved from a snowstorm by the kiss of a fairy. He grows up to become a handsome young man who is claimed by the fairy on the night before his wedding. In the process, Ratmansky provides the story with an additional storyline: his moving The Fairy's Kiss is also about a choreographer who cannot escape his fate.