Full shelves in the dance shop – Frankfurter Rundschau

10 February 2026
by Sylvia Staude

From Nederlands Dans Theater to Gauthier Dance from Stuttgart
Great diversity at the anniversary edition of the Holland Dance Festival

On the poster for the very first edition of the Holland Dance Festival in 1987, the announced ensembles lined up included Tanztheater Wuppertal and the then “Ballett der Städtischen Bühnen Frankfurt.” William Forsythe was already artistic director there at the time. The Frankfurt Ballet has long since ceased to exist, but the Holland Dance Festival, organised as a biennial, celebrates an impressive milestone this year: its twentieth edition, with performances in The Hague, Delft, Rotterdam, Tilburg and Utrecht.

Since 1994, the Swiss Samuel Wuersten has been artistic director. He travels widely, watches a lot and clearly has a strong sense of what is happening in contemporary dance. This also applies to Nederlands Dans Theater, which has been led since the 2020–2021 season by Emily Molnar, herself once a dancer with the Frankfurt Ballet. With a double bill, NDT opened the festival at Amare in The Hague. The evening Wildsong brings together work by the Belgian Jan Martens and the Spaniard Marcos Morau.

Kid in a Candy Shop, the forty-minute piece by Jan Martens, is danced by 23 dancers in softly coloured bodysuits. In a video, flowers are seen opening in time-lapse and later almost exploding. The piece is not sweet at all, however. That is due to the sharp choice of music, including Pretty by Julia Wolfe and the GG Concerto by Hanna Kulenty, in which the harpsichord sounds increasingly aggressive. The movement language also contributes to this: at times slightly absurd, then angular, expansive or, conversely, mechanical.

The work brings to mind Merce Cunningham, with his pursuit of abstract dance through chance and improvisation. At the same time, clear structures and feverish solos emerge, precisely in time with the rhythmic rattling of the harpsichord. The formations and colours change, but what stands out most is the richness of detail. At no moment does the energy drop.

The same is true of Horses by Marcos Morau, although this work is of a completely different nature. It is playful, but also dark. The lighting recalls murky street lamps that are moved around by the eleven dancers themselves. At first, the auditorium remains lit. You see the stage machinery, a phone rings, a photographer takes pictures. From the orchestra pit comes a cacophony. Morau deliberately chooses contemporary music by, among others, Andrzej Panufnik and Caroline Shaw.

At times Horses literally evokes the image of horses, through hoof-like sounds and heavy, stamping steps. But above all, it carries you into an alienating, slightly Kafkaesque world. Dancers move like hunted Chaplins, their bodies seeming to be controlled from the outside, legs turning rubbery. The speed with which they collapse, slip and become entangled is almost impossible to grasp. Set against this is an almost tender duet and a clear, dark poetry.

Two diverse Dutch companies presented new productions in smaller theatres in The Hague. Without prior knowledge, you would not notice that one dancer is almost blind and another is deaf. For Introdans and the programme HubClub ’26, Fernando Melo, Conny Janssen, Jordy Dik and Inbal Pinto created short works, framed by an overarching structure by Adriaan Luteijn. The variation lies not only in tone and atmosphere, but also in movement languages: sometimes serious, sometimes light and playful.

Highly focused as well was Please Hold My Hand, a seventy-minute work by Jordy Dik for Compagnie Tiuri. Four female dancers, including two with Down syndrome and one without a forearm, present an impressive piece about the marginalisation of women and violence against women. Towards the end, sentimentality briefly threatens, with artificial flower petals covering the floor, but the work remains sharp and confronting. The women are caring, but also tough. One of them cries loudly and for a long time into the microphone, until she is taken away by another.

Companies from Canada, Switzerland, Italy, France and Great Britain travelled to the festival, along with one from Germany: Gauthier Dance from Stuttgart. In Rotterdam, they received a standing ovation with FireWorks. Clever as Eric Gauthier is, he ended the evening with a Bolero by Ravel danced on trampolines, in a furious choreography by Andonis Foniadakis.

Gauthier rarely choreographs himself, but excels in curating mixed programmes. FireWorks features work by nine choreographers, with music by, among others, Chet Baker, Laurie Anderson and Philip Glass. The result is a true firework, full of emotion and an enormous variety of movement colours. It remains painful to observe that Frankfurt has by now almost become a dance desert. Fortunately, Stuttgart is close by. And with the extensive programme of Nederlands Dans Theater in February and March, a trip to the Netherlands is certainly not a bad idea.

Read the full article on Frankfurter Rundschau.de [German]

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