9 February 2026
by Chris Wiegand

Holland Dance Festival celebrates its 20th edition with a programme that disturbs and delights

HubClub presented by Introdans is styled as an irreverent cabaret, with five short works (mostly fragments from existing pieces) sandwiched between an overture and a finale. These dancers are introduced in spangly evening wear, gathered around – and even under – a dining table, cigarettes dangling from lips.

The scene changes between each segment are handled with wit and invention. For Fernando Melo’s nifty piece The Longest Distance Between Two Points, that table is stripped bare, its long planks becoming partners for the cast and even used as impromptu stages for them, held at various angles. Steve Reich’s Music for Pieces of Wood adds pace as plank-carrying dancers circle each other to create human-made borders that appear almost out of thin air in a piece that is free-flowing and claustrophobic as it becomes a parable about division and confined identities. In the wrong hands, these structures oppress; in others, they provide support. It’s deceptively simple, surprisingly moving when two yearning men are separated by a wall and is – beware splinters! – performed without gloves or socks by a deft company. The potentially lumbering concept proves instead extremely malleable.

Two pieces in HubClub reveal Inbal Pinto’s gift for quirky choreography with a troubling undercurrent. Salty Pink is a seaside folly, with pelvis-thrusting bathers stretching out against a bucolic backdrop and seeking picture-postcard fun, their ruddy demeanour cracking to reveal despair. Boulevard of Broken Dreams, featuring a Foley sound artist, has a circus spirit and trompe l’oeil effects, as a floaty dress is pulled on and off each dancer, taking on a different meaning each time. The costume becomes almost as charged a symbol as the red dress in Bausch’s Rite of Spring, sparking joy, jealousy and fury at different turns, depending on the combination of wearer and observers. This disrobing and dressing is done with smooth grace, Pinto’s call for communal respect and liberty as understated as Melo’s.

Conny Janssen’s Manoeuvres is short and sweet: an escapist tea break in a drab canteen for a group of workers. To a medley of golden oldies, they are first seen daydreaming – reading a novel or building a castle from sugarcubes. Then they are dancing in their seats, up on tabletops, sharing loose-hipped rock’n’roll duets or scampering across the floor. Percussion is provided by spoons and cups. Pointedly, they turn to look at the clock on the wall: how will you choose to spend your time off? It’s an irresistible 10 minutes that you don’t want to end – much like the last dancer, still lost in movement as the cleaners pack up around him.

Read the full review in The Guardian.com