Nederlands Dans Theater's Spiritwalking is a tonic for the mind. If your brain lacks a much needed moral and creative boost this is your December pick-me-up. This piece is better described by the effect it has, rather than its specific elements. It's all there, the virtuoso dancing that never gets old, the brilliant live music, the mysteriously connected couples and fast synchronicity of the dancers whirled into a subtle feeling of expansion.
Set in a very wide open space (an old gas-container on the edge of Amsterdam in this case) this piece unfolds in three pages: black (past), red (present) and white (future) as the dance floor literally flips over from one colour to the other. The very pleasant and effective lights (Tom Bevoort) stay on most of the time lending the stage a homely feeling. We feel connect to the dancers.
As we walk in, ballet master Charles Mudry is seated on the stage and tells (autobiographical?) stories about growing up in Switzerland and vivid images of an early youth. His role seems to be taken over by middle aged Stefan Żeromsky (retired NDT dancer in fine form), a milder mannered 3-day bearded Mark Strong/Andy Garcia lookalike. He observes and participates as he walks onwards from his youth into the rest of his life.
I was pleasantly surprised to hear the sound of a nyckelharpa (key fiddle) as a musical opening. Tusen Tankar ("A Thousand Thoughts") is a very Swedish folk tune balled about an unanswered love, with a late 19th century feeling. Some of the ladies' draped costumes have the same feeling about them. It is great to hear Philip Glass live on stage by the Ragazze Quartet, seated behind the dancers on a shallow podium in front of a large black balcony. From the Violin concerto no. 1, the driven “Grid” from Koyaanisqatsi and the specially commissioned String quartet no.7 by Glass for this piece, it is all played with great energy and leads the dance forward.
Sol León and Paul Lightfoot's vocabulary is recognisable in the great solo- and pas de deux work. There is a great section of two couples dancing on a white and black square taking tag-teaming in high speed (Jorge Nozal & Parvaneh Scharafali and Rena Narumi & Thiago Bordin respectively). A scene like this only works well with dancers of this virtuosity. But the innovation is in the group work this time: funny, fast and groovily synchronous. A group of round-hatted blackdressed 'workers' on a big red rectangle reminded me of anything from the 7 dwarfs on their way to work to what a North-Korean dance-performance with a dissonance would look like. The excessive individuality of the interspersed solo performances would certainly be deemed particularly unrevolutionary. Spencer Dickhaus, Jianhui Wang in duo and Marne van Opstal (Paul Bettany if he could dance) deserve special mention for their very present and engaging command of the dance space.