Netherlands Dance Theater

Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT; literal translation, Netherlands Dance Theatre) is a Dutch contemporary dance company. NDT is headquartered at the Lucent Danstheater in The Hague. In addition to the Lucent Danstheater, NDT performs at other venue in the Netherlands, including Amsterdam's Het Muziektheater and Nijmegen's Stadsschouwburg.

NDT was founded in 1959 by Benjamin Harkarvy, Aart Verstegen and Carel Birnie together with a group of 18 members of the Dutch National Ballet (which was directed by Sonia Gaskell). Their intention was to break away from the more traditionally oriented Dutch National Ballet (Het Nederlands Ballet). NDT focused onto new ideas and experimentation with the exploration of new forms and techniques of dance.

In 1961 the Nederlands Dans Theater got subsidy from the city of The Hague and from the government. In the 1960s the NDTs repertoire comprised classical dance with a strong influence by American modern dance. The NDT got unprecedented recognition and success with the guidance of different persons like Hans van Manen and Jiří Kylián as artistic directors. In the first years of the 1970s there was no clear policy because of various conflicts within the board of the NDT. That changed when in 1975 Jirí Kylian entered the board as artistic leader.

The Nederlands Dans Theater is based in the Lucent Danstheater at the Spui in The Hague since 1987.

Many of the founding NDT dancers have made their mark on Dutch ballet and dance:

The first group of dancers also included:

Jiří Kylián, Paul Lightfoot and Sol León (the two of them also referred to as Lightfoot León).

The Nederlands Dans Theater collaborates a lot with guest choreographers. For example: Hans van Manen, Johan Inger, Crystal Pite, Lukáš Timulak, Cayetano Soto, Marco Goecke, Medhi Walerski, Ohad Naharin, Tero Saarinen, Wayne McGregor and William Forsythe.

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