Other Dances, one of the opening events of the Holland Festival 2025 by the National Opera & Ballet, delivered two fresh pieces – Other Dances, the Dutch premiere by renowned American master Jerome Robbins and the world premiere of Trio Kagel by Russian-Ukrainian-American top choreographer Alexei Ratmansky. An ode to the infectious capacity of pure abstract dance, the two premiered ballets are accompanied by Hans van Manen’s enthralling Solo. Beginning with Ted Brandsen’s acclaimed The Chairman Dances, the night closed with David Dawson’s entrancing The Four Seasons, which received a full standing ovation once again, just as it did in the Dutch premiere in 2021.
Under the same name, Other Dances was first conceived in 1976 by Jerome Robbins as a wedding present for Russian ballet star Natalia Makarova and only intended as an occasional work. In this interpretation, dancers Olga Smirnova and Jacopo Tissi tell a story of profound delicacy, a meeting between intense expressiveness under extreme control and the young sensitivity of a darling clumsiness. Especially enabled by 2022 Dance Europe Dancer of the Year, Smirnova’s mastery of elongation and precision, the finely choreographed movement quality creates almost a vacuum of attention, drawing the audience into a dynamic of gentleness, hesitation, and suspense.
Trio Kagel is rendered by Alexei Ratmansky based on some parts from Mauricio Kagel’s Rrrrrrr…, a 41-part composition originally written for organ. The trio Anna Tsygankova, Giorgi Potskishvili and Kira Hilli embodied rich theatricality, complete with the “fourth character”, accordionist Vincent van Amsterdam. Also a trio (Robin Park, Edo Wijnen, and Daniel Robert Silva), Hans van Manen’s Solo is a powerful challenge to human physicality in a display of energy, bravura, and relentless joy.
The Chairman Dances opened the night by cleansing the viewers’ palette: a swirl of dancers in gender-neutral white flowy dresses designed by François-Noël Cherpin, Ted Brandsen intended the piece to be a celebration of the joy of dance and music and a hymn to human strength.
This theme is echoed yet simultaneously designed differently in the finale The Four Seasons, a masterpiece co-produced by Semperoper Ballett in Dresden and the Dutch National Ballet. The sublime beauty and pain of mankind and nature were evoked by British choreographer David Dawson’s seamless choreography of movement between the thirteen dancers and geometric light props. It is difficult to explain why I was brought to tears experiencing the piece. There is an undiluted intensity of the yearning to create meaning tottering on the suggestion that there is no meaning. This articulation of an essence mathematical yet sentimental is one that I already long to revisit.
Other Dances will be performed again on the 18th, 19th, and 22nd of June for those who desire to dwell in the beauty of art at the National Opera & Ballet, pursued indefinitely between the dancers, choreographers, orchestra, music artists, lighting and set designers, costume makers, and all other characters within this grand operation. Rosina Lui 12th June 2025
Photo by Hugo Thomassen
