Nederland Dans Theater will change the way you think about dance

Nederlands Dans Theater
Civic Theatre
Until July 2

The audience leaving the Civic Theatre last night after seeing the Nederland Dans Theater (NDT) knew they had seen something inspiring and memorable. There was a real buzz with people seeming to be inspired to walk like dancers, gesture like dancers and they were probably thinking like dancers. NDT offered superb dancers, amazing choreography and intelligent productions, all the hallmarks of a true creative force.

NDT has been a leading contemporary dance company since the 1960s and been highly successful internationally. The current director is Paul Lightfoot and, before him, the company was led by Jiri Kylian, who choreographed Soldiers Mass” for the Royal New Zealand Ballet.

As well as Kylian and Lightfoot, the repertoire of Nederland Dans Theater comprises a large number of works by internationally renowned choreographers such as Mats Ek and William Forsythe.

The company’s reputation for pushing boundaries, clever invention and strong physical dance is well demonstrated in their current production of four works – “Safe as Houses” and “Stop-Motion” by Sol Leon & Paul Lightfoot, “Woke up Blind” by Marco Goecke and “The Statement” by Crystal Pite.

“Safe as Houses” was first on the programme with the dancers responding to the music of Bach. Like the music the dancing was a collection of variations on central themes, the dancers intersecting and interacting like the complex music, creating visual equivalents of the music.

Various sections of the music and dance were defined by a large centrally pivoted wall that slowly rotated with dancers appearing and disappearing creating a sense of time and space changing and transiting.

The dancers showed themselves to be absolutely focused on their technique with a rigorous attention to accuracy of movement, appearing to be a mixture of automatons and fantastic insects inhabiting ever changing environments.

The dancing in “Woke up Blind” were like the imagery of sleepers made concrete. All the surreal qualities of dreams and nightmares were explored with dancers whose limbs and bodies appeared to be made of rubber or manipulated like jointed marionettes such was the flexibility and contortions they put themselves through. The dancers' bodies seemed to ripple inside their skins as though the dance was occurring within them.

“The Statement” was the most experimental work and it was obvious that this was theatre as much as dance. The four dancers performed to a sound track of four people engaged in an office discussion of the preparation of “a statement” which had to satisfy head office.

The dancers responded to the text rather than music, their actions motivated by the words and reactions of the discussion. In many cases they were responding to the inner voice of the character they represented, making gestures and movements that showed how they were feeling rather than what they were thinking.

This was a great piece of comic dance theatre which allowed the dancers to engage in complex movement to deal with issues of conflict, honesty, deceit, friendship and anger.

“Stop Motion” used large-scale video imagery and music by minimalist German composer Max Richter to deal with notions of youth, change and the environment.

The work had the dancers performing in an almost classical mode with carefully defined movements and engagements often performing in a way which suggested a cinematic reimagining of events. The dancing for this section was the most captivating but the work as a whole had less cohesion than the other three.

The dancers ultimately strip away the set until side stage and backstage are revealed, which is in part a reference to the destruction of the NDT theatre as part of a cultural centre rebuild.

There are only three more performances of this extraordinary dance company, which will change the way you think about contemporary dance.

Tune into NBR Radio’s Sunday Business with Andrew Patterson on Sunday morning, for analysis and feature-length interviews.