Choreographer Nils Christe visits the National Ballet Academy

Published on June 27, 2016

On Thursday 2 June, choreographer Nils Christe and his wife and assistant Annegien Sneep paid a visit to the National Ballet Academy. It was an exploratory visit that will be followed up intensively in the coming academic year, as students will be dancing a work by Christe in the 2017 edition of Dancers of Tomorrow. Next season is the thirtieth anniversary of our academy, which we will celebrate with an end-of-year performance almost exclusively comprised of works by Dutch choreographers.

In 1987, the directors of the two classical ballet schools in Amsterdam, the Nel Roos Academy and Scapino Dance Academy, quit their posts. After that, the two schools merged to form the National Ballet Academy, led by the new artistic director Erna Droog.

So next season, we are celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of our academy. For the occasion, we are presenting a special – practically all-Dutch – edition of our end-of-year performance Dancers of Tomorrow, including works by Ted Brandsen, Nils Christe, Rudi van Dantzig, our patron Hans van Manen, Toer van Schayk and Ernst Meisner (coordinator of the Junior Company). The latter will create a new finale ballet for all the pupils and students. The only ‘foreign’ element in this anniversary edition is the Dutch premiere of Scènes de Ballet, by the British choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, who is in great demand all over the world. We are extremely proud to be able to add this ballet to our repertoire.