Dutch and Canadian dance students share the stage in Welcome Canada!

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On 1 February, the stage was shared by students from the three main dance academies in the Netherlands – the Royal Conservatoire, Codarts and the National Ballet Academy – with students from Canada’s National Ballet School in Welcome Canada! The joint performance took place as part of the Holland Dance Festival.

On 1 February, the stage was shared by students from the three main dance academies in the Netherlands – the Royal Conservatoire, Codarts and the National Ballet Academy – with students from Canada’s National Ballet School in Welcome Canada! The joint performance took place as part of the Holland Dance Festival.

Welcome Canada! is an initiative of Holland Dance director Samuel Wuersten, in response to the Assemblée Internationale organised on several occasions by Canada’s National Ballet School in recent years. For this Assemblée, the school invites dance academies from all over the world, so Holland Dance has now invited the Canadians, in turn, to come and get to know the Dutch dance heritage and the main dance academies in the Netherlands.

In the joint performance that took place at the Holland Dance Festival, students from the National Ballet Academy’s pre-professional programme danced David Dawson’s virtuoso and extremely challenging piece 5 and and the pas de trois from August Bounonville’s Le Conservatoire.

Canada’s National Ballet School performed four works, including sections from John Neumeier’s Yondering (which will also be presented at the National Ballet Academy’s end-of-year performances in July) and a special performance of Aszure Barton’s Come In, which she originally created for Mikhail Baryshnikov and students of the Juilliard School in New York.

A few days before the performance, the Canadian students, led by their distinguished artistic director Mavis Staines, paid a visit to the National Ballet Academy. The students took classes took classes on the pre-professional programme and attended a rehearsal by Dutch National Ballet’s Junior Company.

During their stay in the Netherlands, the students also visited the dance courses of the Royal Conservatoire, in The Hague, and of Codarts, in Rotterdam.

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