Hans van Manen

Biography

Hans van Manen was internationally recognised as one of the grand masters of contemporary ballet. Including his works for television, he created more than 150 ballets, all of which bore his distinct signature. Clarity in structure, refined simplicity and an aversion to decorative frills formed the key elements of his extremely musical ballets, which always concerned human relationships without becoming anecdotal.

Van Manen received his first ballet lessons in the late 1940s from Sonia Gaskell, who engaged him in her group Ballet Recital in 1951. He 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, Van Manen 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 Dutch National Ballet (1973–1987), and then with Nederlands Dans Theater (1988–2003). From 2005, he once again held the post of resident choreographer with Dutch National Ballet.

In addition to being part of the repertoire of Dutch National Ballet, Nederlands Dans Theater and Introdans—the three Dutch ‘custodians’ of his works—his ballets were also danced by over ninety companies outside the Netherlands. Whenever one of his ballets was staged, he was intensively involved in the process. In the rehearsal studio, he had the final word in the interpretation of his work and added the finishing touches in his own inimitable way.

Van Manen’s most important ‘dance muses’ with Nederlands Dans Theater and Dutch National Ballet included (in chronological order) Gérard Lemaître, Marianne Sarstädt, Alexandra Radius and Han Ebbelaar, Coleen Davis, Rachel Beaujean, Fiona Lummis, Sol Léon, Sabine Kupferberg and Igone de Jongh. The many international stars with whom he worked included Anthony Dowell, Marcia Haydée, Natalia Makarova, Rudolf Nureyev, Ulyana Lopatkina and Diana Vishneva.

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 and the German Musikpreis for his brilliant musicality. At the Hans van Manen Festival organised by Dutch National Ballet to celebrate 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 Society of Arts. In addition to his work as a choreographer, Hans van Manen was also active as a highly successful photographer for over a decade. His photographic work was published in book form and presented at international exhibitions.