Choreographer Hans van Manen has died at 93
Hans van Manen died yesterday, 17 December 2025, at the age of 93.
Van Manen (b. 11 July 1932 in the Netherlands) was the best-known choreographer of the Netherlands for over sixty years and regarded as one of the great masters of contemporary ballet. He was also one of the most productive choreographers, creating more than 150 works.
Ted Brandsen, director Dutch National Ballet, said:
Hans van Manen is one of the greatest artists our country has produced and an incredibly inspiring friend to so many people. His contribution to the development of dance in the Netherlands and far beyond is of immense importance. Hans has left a lasting mark on Dutch National Ballet through his ballets, his vision on dance and people, and his many years of intense connection with us all.
Driven, hot-tempered, endlessly curious, loving, generous, committed, sweet (and difficult), a large dose of humour, incomparable and unforgettable, the great choreographer, the king of swing, a great friend – Hans is all this and more to me and to us. His friendship was one of the greatest gifts of my life. His art will live on in the bodies of the dancers who perform his work and in the eyes of countless spectators.
Van Manen made his name in the Netherlands and Germany, but gradually his talent was recognised by prominent ballet companies all over the world. Besides being presented by the three Dutch ‘guardians’ of the Van Manen repertoire – Dutch National Ballet, Nederlands Dans Theater and Introdans – his works are now performed by over a hundred companies including Stuttgarter Ballett, La Scala Ballet, Staatsballett Berlin, Wiener Staatsballett, Zürich Ballett, Ballet de l’Opéra national de Paris, Birmingham Royal Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Philadelphia Ballet, Houston Ballet, the National Ballet of Japan and, up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, also the Mariinsky Ballet in St Petersburg and the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow.
In establishing the Hans van Manen Foundation in 2021, Van Manen gave Dutch National Ballet custodianship of his complete oeuvre. The foundation is responsible for staging and distributing his choreographic work and for monitoring the quality of this Dutch heritage. For the time being, the copyrights for the ballets remain with Van Manen’s husband Henk van Dijk.
Van Manen (born in Nieuwer-Amstel, now called Amstelveen) had his first ballet lessons in the late 1940s from Sonia Gaskell, who engaged him in her group Ballet Recital in 1951. Van Manen went on to dance with the Netherlands Opera Ballet and Roland Petit‘s Ballets de Paris.
In 1955, he made his debut as a choreographer with Olé, Olé, la Margarita. His third creation, Feestgericht, received the State Award for Choreography. From 1960 onwards, he worked alternately with the two main dance companies of the Netherlands. After co-directing Nederlands Dans Theater for ten years, he became a resident choreographer – first with the Dutch National Ballet (1973-1987), and then with Nederlands Dans Theater (1988-2003). From 2005, he once again joined Dutch National Ballet, in the post of resident choreographer, renamed senior choreographer in 2025.
Although Van Manen’s first and last choreographic works span around 65 years, all his ballets bear his distinct signature – clarity in structure, refined simplicity and an aversion to unnecessary decorative frills form the key elements in his exceptionally musical ballets.
One of his most important maxims was ‘less is more’, and he was also fond of proclaiming that ‘dance expresses dance, and nothing else’. In the end, however, his ballets can only be labelled abstract in part, as they always concern people and human relationships, albeit without becoming anecdotal. In the midst of this apparent simplicity, Van Manen succeeded in evoking a whole world of feelings and emotions with just one glance or a single hand gesture.
Awards and honours
For his individual ballets and for his great contribution to the arts in general, Van Manen received numerous awards, including the Erasmus Prize, the Prix Benois de la Danse Life Achievement Award, the Grand Prix à la Carrière, the VSCD Oeuvre Prize, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the German magazine tanz and – of which he was particularly proud – the German Musikpreis for his brilliant musicality. At the Hans van Manen Festival organised by Dutch National Ballet in celebration of his seventy-fifth birthday in 2007, the master choreographer was appointed a Commander of the Order of the Netherlands Lion. This was followed in 2017 by his appointment as a Commander of the French Ordre des Lettres et des Arts, and in 2018 King Willem-Alexander presented him with the Honorary Medal for Arts and Science of the Order of the House of Orange for his ‘enormous contribution to the arts in the Netherlands and to ballet in particular’.
From 2013, Van Manen was patron of the Dutch National Ballet Academy, and in 2015 he became a member of the Dutch Society of Arts. Besides being a choreographer, Hans van Manen was also an extremely successful photographer for around ten years. His photographic work has been published in book form and shown at international exhibitions. In 2024, he donated his photographic oeuvre to the Rijksmuseum, in Amsterdam.
Graham Spicer, aka ‘Gramilano’, is a writer, director and photographer based in Milan. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy. His articles have appeared in various publications from Woman’s Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the Danza in Italia column for Dancing Times magazine. Graham was the historical advisor on Codice Carla, the 2023 documentary on Italian ballerina Carla Fracci.
Graham also works as a dance photographer, and his photos have appeared in many books, theatre programmes, and magazines, including Dancing Times, Dance Spirit and Ballet2000, as well as all the major Italian newspapers.
He is a member of the Dance Section of The Critics’ Circle.
