NDT Returns to The Joyce! GPS Global has been awarded the USA Tour logistics for NDT2 February 2015. GPS managed to deliver the full set of props, stage and costumes to The Joyce Theatre. Delivery was a challenge due to the heavy snow storms this period, however GPS managed to deliver in time.
About the performance:
Dance historian Deborah Jowitt offers an insight into the history Nederlands Dans Theater 2. When Benjamin Harkavy left his position as ballet master of the Dutch National Ballet in 1959, he took a number of the dancers with him and founded a new group that took the name Nederlands Dance Theater. He intended to expose the dancers and their audience to more contemporary choreography. NDT expanded its horizons beyond its host country—especially as directed by choreographer Jiří Kylian, beginning in 1975.
Kylián created Nederlands Dance Theater 2 in 1978 as a springboard for training young dancers who might one day “graduate” into the parent company. The dancers in NDT2 are young; they range from seventeen-year-olds to ones who have reached twenty-two. But this ensemble of eighteen grew up fast—learning works by major choreographers who treated them like the mature performers that they are in terms of the many years of training they sweated through.
NDT2 has also fostered younger choreographers. On this U.S. tour, NDT2 is presenting two works by the team of Paul Lightfoot and Sol Léon (Lightfoot has headed the company since 2011), one by resident choreographer Johan Inger, and one by the duo of Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar, who direct the Israeli company L-E-V. Two of the four dances are American premieres. And these choreographers have moved the company into new territory. In these troubled times, it’s not surprising that they want not just to demonstrate the physical beauty and virtuosity of the dancers but to show the forces that twist them, cripple them, or knock them off balance. Awkwardness may reveal humanity and vulnerability, especially when allied with stunning physical skills and emotions that are keyed to a challenged environment.