✦ Origins ✦
Nederlands Dans Theater was founded in 1959 by a group of dancers and choreographers who broke away from the more traditionally structured Nederlands Ballet, led by Sonia Gaskell (one of the forerunners of today's Dutch National Ballet, which was formed in 1961), seeking greater creative freedom. The company's identity was most decisively shaped by Czech choreographer Jiří Kylián, who served as artistic director from 1975 to 1999 and continued creating for the company for years afterward, building a repertory and a dancer training approach that became a reference point across the contemporary ballet world.
NDT today operates two performing companies under one roof: NDT 1, the senior company, and NDT 2, made up of young dancers up to the age of 23 (NDT's own pages variously give the lower limit as 17 and as 19) transitioning from training into professional careers - a structure that has made the organization as influential for developing young contemporary dancers as for its main-stage repertory.
Artistic Identity
NDT's house style blends a ballet-trained dancer's precision with a much wider vocabulary of weight, fall, and floor-based movement than traditional classical technique allows. The company has long commissioned choreographers working at the edge of ballet and contemporary dance - including Crystal Pite, who has served as an associate choreographer, and the longtime choreographic duo Sol León and Paul Lightfoot, whose atmospheric, design-driven works became a signature of the company's repertory through the 2000s and 2010s.
Notable Repertory
Petite Mort (1991)
Jiří Kylián's duet-driven ensemble work, set to two Mozart piano concertos and built around fencing foils used as both prop and metaphor, remains one of the most frequently licensed pieces in the contemporary ballet repertory worldwide. Read the full profile →
Shutters Shut (2003)
Created by longtime NDT choreographic duo Sol León and Paul Lightfoot, this rapid-fire duet is set to a recording of Gertrude Stein reading her own poetry, with the dancers' movement precisely timed to the rhythm of her spoken words.
Solo Echo (2012)
A Crystal Pite work made for NDT 1, drawing on a Mark Strand poem and Brahms' cello sonatas to build a meditation on mortality through falling, catching, and dispersing group formations.
Why It Matters
Few companies have done as much to establish contemporary ballet as its own distinct genre - neither classical repertory nor experimental modern dance, but a third thing built from both. Dancers and choreographers who passed through NDT carried that sensibility into companies worldwide, making it one of the most influential training grounds in the field.
Sources & Further Reading
- Six decades of NDT, Nederlands Dans Theater
- Dancers NDT 1 and NDT 2, Nederlands Dans Theater
- Timeless and uplifting: NDT1 dances Crystal Pite, Bachtrack (2019)
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