Hip Hop Meets Ballet: Dutch National Ballet and ISH Dance Collective Present Oscar Wilde’s “Dorian Gray”
Lars De Vos in Dorian. ©Michel Schnater
Combining opposites can be challenging, but such combinations can be surprisingly delicious: think ice cold vanilla ice-cream served with a piping hot raspberry sauce. From 11 May until 16 June 2023, Dutch National Ballet and ISH Dance Collective, a street dance ensemble, present their latest collaboration Dorian at Dutch National Opera & Ballet and at different venues across the Netherlands. The production mixes hip hop and ballet and presents an adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. Wilde’s novel tells the haunting story of a young man in late nineteenth century England: Dorian is a beautiful young man. His artist friend Basil is a great admirer of his beauty and paints his portrait. He also introduces Dorian to Lord Henry Wotton. Henry teaches Dorian to care only about beauty and the pursuit of pleasure. Dorian descends into a life of sinful excesses and sells his soul in return for staying eternally young and beautiful. But Dorian’s portrait doesn’t: with every sin, the portrait ages and grows ugly. Dorian presents an adapted version of the story set in today’s world – a world challenged by the image-obsessed pressures of social media. The production brings together dancers of Dutch National Ballet, Dutch National Ballet’s Junior Company and ISH Dance Collective. The choreography is the third collaboration between choreographer Ernst Meisner, artistic coordinator of Dutch National Ballet’s Junior Company, and ISH Dance Collective’s artistic director Marco Gerris. The production’s music is newly composed by Joey Roukens, sets and costumes are by Dieuweke van Reij. Luca Andrea Stappers makes live illustrations which are projected on a large screen, creating the atmosphere of different scenes but also painting the portrait of Dorian and changing it as the story evolves.
TWoA talked to ISH Dance Collective’s Lars De Vos (ensemble member and understudy of Henry) and Skya Powney, a first-year member of Dutch National Ballet’s Junior Company and a graduate of London’s Royal Ballet School who will dance the principal role of Sybil at several performances.
Getting to Know Each Other
Meisner and Gerris initially formed small groups combining a few hip hop dancers with a few ballet dancers, gave the groups tasks, and then left the dancers to their own devices. Lars explained: “All the hip hop dancers from ISH have such a unique style. It’s not that everybody can do the same spectacular movements. Everybody moves in their own way. So, we workshop first: we partner, or make small groups with the ballet dancers and some hip hop dancers, and then we make a routine by ourselves to feel each other, to see what movements are possible. At the end, Marco and Ernst try to shape it in their way.”
Skya added: “They would give us tasks beforehand, give us an idea what we were aiming for. Then we take over, we do what we do best. It was very much improvising. And then they would come and work with us during the process and say: ‘We like this, we don’t want that.’” This way, the dancers got to know each other and their style. According to Skya: “We are working with hip hop dancers and their movement isn’t that familiar to us, definitely not with my body. It took some time to adjust, but it was very interesting to see what they can do because they are all incredibly talented. For us, to match up with what they were doing and make it our own, so we looked ok - and that I wasn’t making an idiot of myself - was interesting. It was quite complicated, but it was a really fascinating process.” The choreographic process thus had a large improvisational component, something which ballet dancers are less used to. As Skya explains: “As ballet dancers, we are very much used to and inclined to the choreographic process of being taught steps.”
The Power of Experience
Skya also had the honour of shadowing Dutch National Ballet’s veteran principal dancer Anna Tsygankova as she was creating the part of Sybil (Skya will also dance the part of Sybil). She was inspired by witnessing the artistic self-confidence and self-knowledge that comes with experience: “Because of the experience that Anna Tsygankova has in her field, she was able to walk into that room and know what looked good, what didn’t look good, what worked for her. The choreographic process between her, Ernst, Marco was very much like: ‘Why am I doing this? What does this mean?’ She was very headstrong on this, and I thought this was incredibly powerful to see: she did question a lot of the movement which I would never have the confidence to do. One, because I’m younger, and two, because I’m so inclined to just doing the steps, whereas, because of her experience, she was able to just figure out why she was doing something: does that make sense with the story? She would a lot of the time say: ‘If I’m upset, or if I’m feeling this emotion, I wouldn’t do this.’
Skya Powney rehearsing Dorian. ©Altin Kaftira
Structured Improvisation vs Set Choreography
The roles of Sybil and Dorian are both classical ballet parts, while the roles of Henry and Basil are hip hop roles. Within the ensemble groups, the dancers also stay within their own native style. But there is one big difference between the classical and the hip hop principal roles: while the steps of the classical principal parts are set, the hip hop principal roles follow a base structure but leave it up to the individual performers to fill in this structure. Lars, who understudies the dancer performing Henry, explains the difference: “It’s structured improvisation. I understudy Liam: there are some movements he does that I cannot do, but it’s also the other way around. If I would do Henry, it would be a different show, but the base structure - the duets, where I have to be at what moment - would still be the same. But the movement would be different.”
Broadening Your Artistic Horizon
For Skya, working on Dorian has been an incredible growing experience: “For me, it’s been an incredible honour to be able to do it: it is my first year at the junior company and I’m already dancing such a prominent role. In truth, when they told me that I am doing Sybil, I was just in utter shock. The whole process has been just incredibly enlightening, and just educational for me, because working in a studio with Anna Tsygankova, a principal dancer with such experience, has been incredible. She’s been a dancer here for such a long time, it was just really, really incredible. The fact that they trust me enough to learn this role felt really good.”
For Lars, this is already the third time that he is collaborating with Dutch National Ballet, but he still remembers his reaction when he found out about the first collaboration: “I thought: awesome! I was really, really curious: it’s not just the movements that are different, it is also the culture, how we approach things. The very first time we entered this building was really funny because we are all loud. Everybody was really polite, and it felt like - everybody knew we were in the building when we arrived. I think it’s still like that.” Skya laughs and agrees: “Yeah, definitely! But I think a lot of us have started to join in now.” Lars continues his train of thought: “We heard from Ted (Brandsen, director of Dutch National Ballet) that the company is kind of changing, and we are infecting them with our loudness. But they like it, that everybody is getting loose.” Skya agrees: “They are giving us a bit more of a voice, which is nice, a bit more reason to be ourselves. Not to fit into it like a cog in a machine: a bit of freedom.”
For Lars, it’s been equally inspiring: “It’s not every day that you get to work with these amazing, highly skilled dancers. It’s also really cool to combine the styles on a really high level. And for us, it’s also always challenging, to have these two opposite worlds try to combine together: I really like challenges, so I get really excited about that.” There is one thing in particular that he admires in ballet dancers: “The discipline. The amount of hours they work and have to put in to get to this level is really inspiring to watch. Seeing first-hand how they are working, their work ethic, is really cool.”
Anna Tsygankova in Dorian. ©Michel Schnater
Keeping Ballet Relevant: The Power of Experiments
Dorian certainly provides food for thought for all those debating how to keep ballet relevant and how to make it more accessible to wider audiences. For Skya, asking these questions is crucial: “It’s a constant topic of conversation nowadays. How does ballet evolve, how are we going to develop it over time? And I definitely think this production is a very big contributing factor. Because it is pushing the boundaries. It is definitely pushing our boundaries as dancers, what we are physically capable of. For audiences, it will be very interesting to watch. It’s going to be controversial; it’s going to be subjective. Some people won’t like it, some people will. Everyone needs to bear in mind that it is an experiment and that we are trying to create something unique and different and not stick to the moulds of what has been done so many times before. As a dancer, we are all very curious about that, because we can do ballet after ballet, and we enjoy it, and we love the classical side of things. But doing something different can contribute so much to the classical as well because I know that I am growing as a dancer just by doing this project. And I know that next time I do a classical piece, I will be different than I was before: I’m not afraid to try different things, to just experiment, also with my body. Also seeing what they are capable of, just the fact that they can stand on their hand: the body is capable of doing all of that, and it seems so natural, whereas ballet feels quite unnatural. So, the fact that they are capable of doing this doesn’t mean that I should underestimate myself as a ballet dancer, because there is a lot of insecurity. It’s a big scary world sometimes. But being able to see how far these people can go is incredibly inspiring, I think.”
Reaching Out
The project also taught Skya the power of daring to step outside your own circle: “Dancing in a piece like this shows you what people are capable of when you put them together. It’s really taught me that it’s not a bad thing to reach out to different communities, to different art forms. You don’t necessarily have to stay within you circle and ask people: ‘What do you think of this?’ Go to a museum, ask other people – I think it’s just a great thing!”