Dutch National Ballet’s premiere of METAMORPHOSIS to celebrate International Dance Day

Dutch National Ballet celebrates International Dance Day with a film of David Dawson's new creation METAMORPHOSIS.

The stream of METAMORPHOSIS on 29 April 2021 will start at 20:15 (CET) on the company's YouTube channel, and Facebook and Instagram pages.

METAMORPHOSIS is a work in five parts about “hope and humanity, about finding light in the darkness”. Dawson, Dutch National Ballet's Associate Artist, says:

It is a vehicle of hope. It's about carrying on, not giving up, about the metaphorical road we travel from winter to spring, about believing there is a light at the end of a tunnel.

Dawson was a dancer with the company from 1995 to 2000, and became its resident choreographer from 2004 to 2006. In 2015, he returned to the company as Artistic Associate, a position he also held from 2000 with Semperoper Ballett in Dresden.

During the company's Christmas Gala last December, principal dancers Anna Ol and James Stout performed a preview of METAMORPHOSIS, which tonight will be seen with the full cast of 23 dancers. The music chosen by Dawson is the piano piece by Philip Glass of the same name. Dawson says:

Glass's composition carries this new choreography, the music brings everything together, immerses you in one atmosphere, in one dream.

Dawson had begun devising the outline of his new work before the corona pandemic, and it was originally going to be performed by the Junior Ballet Antwerp, of which he is patron. After the rehearsals in Antwerp had come to a standstill as closures due to the pandemic began, Dawson decided to continue working on the choreography with dancers of Dutch National Ballet via Zoom.  

Logistically, the realisation of METAMORPHOSIS was not simple as the entire choreography was created via Zoom between Amsterdam and Berlin, where Dawson lives. However, he sees creating via Zoom, recording on film and then streaming ballets online as a challenge and enrichment of the possibilities that dance offers, with close-ups creating an intimacy that is more difficult to achieve on stage.

In the theatre, you can see the complete picture, with film we have the opportunity to step deeper into that world, to be part of the dance. We see more and we see clearly. Human beings are enlarged and we can discover new levels of beauty. The light in the eyes, the breath, the sweat, the skin – the person.

Donations to support the Dutch National Ballet and its artists can be made via this link: http://bit.ly/donation-nob

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Dancers and Creatives

Metamorphosis One
Anna Ol and James Stout
Metamorphosis Two
Nina Tonoli, Sho Yamada, Kayla Fitzpatrick, Salome Leverashvili, Nathan Brhane, Clara Superfine, Dustin True, Michaela DePrince, Daniel Montero Real and Nancy Burer
Metamorphosis Three
Young Gyu Choi, Edo Wijnen, Joseph Massarelli, Sem Sjouke
Metamorphosis Four
Floor Eimers, Constantine Allen, Erica Horwood, Martin ten Kortenaar, Jingjing Mao and Jared Wright
Metamorphosis Five
Riho Sakamoto

Piano – Olga Khoziainova
Costume designs – Eddie Grundy and David Dawson
Lighting designs – Bert Dalhuijsen

Gramilano( Editor )

Graham Spicer is a writer, director and photographer in Milan, blogging (under the name ‘Gramilano') about dance, opera, music and photography for people “who are a bit like me and like some of the things I like”. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy.

His scribblings have appeared in various publications from Woman's Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the ‘Danza in Italia' column for Dancing Times magazine.