11 Jun I found this last night

“I found that last night,” Hans van Manen jokes, half to himself, half to the cameraman. It’s also a nod to himself, because Hans really doesn’t know where that discovery came from. What he does know is that that’s how it works.

“I work best when my back is against the wall,” he says. “Sometimes they write to me six months in advance and ask what the dance is about. I really don’t know yet.” Then he adds: “I always know the beginning of a new choreography, and usually the ending too, but in between, that’s born at the moment.”

Thinking with his body
Hans created no fewer than 150 choreographies. Many of these works are still in the repertoire of a dance company somewhere around the world. In the Netherlands, there’s a living database of his pieces by one of his favorite dancers, Rachel Beaujean. He consistently created at the highest level. But how does that work with creativity?

When Hans says he found the idea last night, he doesn’t mean he was awake. He means he didn’t know it yesterday, but this morning, suddenly. He also needs a certain amount of artistic drive: it has to happen now, and there’s no other time. If you’ve seen Hans on video (there’s the wonderful documentary on NPO: “You dance the steps”), you see him working intensely and passionately, yet calmly. He seems to think and feel with his body.

These will come to mind tonigh
Hans van Manen’s approach is the same as the Time Surfing method: you perform all your activities from a place of calm, and you experience them. You spontaneously choose the next action, which you then experience. You act with passion, and as a result, you increasingly do what you truly want to do. And then, typical Time Surfing: you already know the beginning and where you want to go, but not the steps yet. These will come to mind tonight!

*This post has been automatically translated from Dutch