IL DUTCH NATIONAL BALLET PRESENTA I SUOI NUOVI ASSOCIATI CREATIVI

Zoë Greten, Joshua Junker and Mthuthuzeli November appointed new Creative Associates of Dutch National Ballet Programme of development, collaboration and exchange between choreographers and Dutch National Ballet Appointment for a period of three years Creative Associate affiliation with Kalpana Raghuraman extended for one season Director Ernst Meisner has appointed the choreographers Zoë Greten (the Netherlands), Joshua Junker (the Netherlands) and Mthuthuzeli November (South Africa) as the new Creative Associates of Dutch National Ballet. The three talented makers will be affiliated to the company for a period of three years. Meisner is also extending the affiliation with Kalpana Raghuraman, who has been a Creative Associate of Dutch National Ballet since 2024, until July 2027.

Ernst Meisner, director of Dutch National Ballet: “Zoë, Joshua and Mthuthuzeli are talented choreographers with whom we have worked before. They have all created ballets for us previously, and their appointment as Creative Associates begins a new chapter in our collaboration. We will take time to support and deepen their individual artistic development, to enter into a more intensive dialogue and to look to the future of our art form together. The choreographers will create works for Dutch National Ballet or our Junior Company, and will be involved in several projects throughout the year set up by Dutch National Ballet in collaboration with various partners. For me, exchange, collaboration and talent development are the core values that underpin Dutch National Ballet. I am confident that these three new Creative Associates will challenge and inspire us. We are pleased to continue our affiliation with Kalpana for another year, in order to add even more depth to the developments she has initiated for us. This season, for instance, there will be a follow-up to her ‘Eye on Dance’, in which professionals from the Dutch dance sector enter into dialogue about the challenges faced by makers with roots in the diaspora.” Exchange, collaboration and talent development In 2017, Dutch National Ballet initiated Young Creative Associates , a long-term programme for developing young choreographic talent. In 2024, it was decided to drop the label ‘Young’, in order to accommodate choreographers who are mid-way through their career. Whereas in the early years the focus lay more on commissioning choreographic works and mentoring artistic decision-making, this has now been expanded to include collaboration and exchange. This gives an impulse to the development of talented choreographers and of Dutch National Ballet itself. Zoë Greten: “As a Creative Associate, I’m really excited about developing further within the inspiring team of Dutch National Ballet. In this position, I want to expand my movement idiom in collaboration with the fantastic dancers and the creative team, and to continue investigating how ballet can meet other movement worlds. From my own perspective, I want to contribute to the ongoing development of the company. I’m looking forward to creating new worlds and continuing to explore the boundaries of ballet, together with the dancers.” Joshua Junker: “Over the past few years, I have had the pleasure and good fortune to work with the Junior Company, an experience that has inspired and shaped me immensely as a choreographer. I look forward to continuing this collaboration and further developing and exploring my style as a choreographer with the talented dancers of Dutch National Ballet. I am very grateful that, alongside my dancing career with The Royal Ballet, I am able to take on this role within Dutch National Ballet, a company I have looked up to since I was a child and for which I am now able to create works myself.” Mthuthuzeli November: “I am delighted and incredibly honoured to have this opportunity. In many ways dance has changed my life, and as a creative now I always hope that the work we create carries that power to change people’s lives and I look forward to be part of that world in this new way, collaborating with the team and artists of Dutch National Ballet.'' Zoë Greten (Heerlen, the Netherlands, 2002) is a dancer and choreographer. She graduated from the Dutch National Ballet Academy in 2023 and danced as an apprentice with Nederlands Dans Theater 2 in her final year of training. Zoë’s talent for choreography was already apparent during her training. In 2021, she took part in Dutch National Ballet’s Choreographic Academy, and already in 2022 she created If only I knew the right way for the Junior Company. In 2025, she made her second work for the Junior Company, Sonder. In May 2026, for Dutch National Opera & Ballet, she choreographed the project The Ultimate Playground, in which dance, lighting, projections and music came together to form an interactive playground. Zoë has recently been active as a dancer and choreographer in various projects in the Netherlands and abroad, and is a remarkable voice among her generation. In 2025, she won the Leo Spreksel Award, an incentive award for young dance makers. Zoë’s movement practice is based on contemporary dance and combines the aesthetics of ballet with the dynamics and groundedness of hip hop. Zoë approaches movement as a physical form of storytelling, driven by emotion, intention and imagination. Improvisation plays a central role, stimulating individuality and creativity in the dancers. Her work is clear and precise, with scope for everyone’s individual specificity. Zoë draws inspiration from the universal human experiences that connect us as people. She is interested in the transformation and emotion arising from these experiences and sees the studio as somewhere that revolves around enjoyment and a shared love of dance. Joshua Junker (Nijmegen, the Netherlands, 1998) is a dancer and choreographer. At the age of eight, he started contemporary dance and breakdance with Boys Action. From the age of fourteen, his focus turned to ballet and he started training at the Royal Conservatoire, in The Hague. Two years later, he continued his training at The Royal Ballet School, in London. He is currently a soloist with The Royal Ballet, dancing roles in The Nutcracker and Cinderella, as well as in the contemporary repertoire of choreographers like Wayne McGregor and Crystal Pite. With The Royal Ballet, Joshua created the works Never Known (2024) and Spells (2026) and several works for the choreography project Draft Works, the British equivalent of Dutch National Ballet’s New Moves. In 2023, he created his first work for the Junior Company, Remembrance, for which he received the Incentive Award from Dansersfonds ’79. In 2025, he made a second work for the Junior Company, You do not have to be good. The urge to move is a key element in Joshua’s work, and his daily work as a dancer is an important source for him. He is inspired by his artistic encounters with choreographers and fellow dancers in the studio. This is reflected in his creative process. While moving, he challenges the dancers to explore his style along with him and develop it further. Joshua wants to create work that touches people; work that arouses enthusiasm, excitement or emotion through its movement quality. In his choreography, Joshua combines the classical ballet idiom with more organic movements and elements of hip hop. Mthuthuzeli November (Cape Town, South Africa, 1993) is a dancer and choreographer. Trained in both classical and contemporary dance, he danced with the Cape Dance Company, where he also created his first choreographic work. Mthuthuzeli continued his career with Ballet Black in London, where he carried on with choreography. In recent years, he has grown to become an internationally sought-after choreographer, creating works for The Royal Ballet and Ballet de l’Opéra national de Paris, among others. He received international recognition for Ingoma, which won an Olivier Award for Best Dance Production, and for Chapter 2, which gained him a Benois de la Danse award. From 2024 to 2026, Mthuthuzeli was an Associate Artist with the Dutch National Ballet Academy, in Amsterdam. His first work for the Junior Company, In your Footsteps, premiered in 2026. Mthuthuzeli draws on his personal history for his choreography. In his work, he explores identity, displacement and resilience; themes that are universal and embedded in our collective memory. His works also expose the ritual power and connectivity of the art of ballet. Dancers breathe as a single body; their feet are not only light, but also seek out the ground and make rhythms together. Whether he is telling intimate human stories or creating expansive visual landscapes, his works are known for their raw vulnerability and their narrative clarity, and they appeal to people from a variety of cultures and generations. Kalpana Raghuraman (Leiderdorp, Nederland, 1976) is a choreographer, dancer and anthropologist, and the artistic director of Kalpanarts. In the Netherlands, where she grew up, she was one of the first choreographers to combine Indian dance styles with contemporary Western styles. As a pioneer, she has developed a hybrid dance idiom that engages a broad audience, and has thus paved the way for the next generation of makers looking for a similar artistic freedom. Along with Korzo Theater, she recently created Talent Unveiled, a format in which young makers can share and test out their love of Indian dance in the studio. In 2021, Kalpana worked for the first time with the dancers of the Junior Company, at the Choreographic Academy . In 2024, Raghuraman was appointed a Creative Associate of Dutch National Ballet, since when she has created Hybrid (2025), in which dancers from Kalpanarts shared the stage with dancers from the Junior Company, and Source (2026), where her dancers worked with dancers from Dutch National Ballet. In both works, she explored the similarities between her language and that of ballet, focusing on musicality and interplay of lines, in the body and in the space. Kalpana is a co-director of the updated production of La Bayadère , premiered by Dutch National Ballet in 2026. In collaboration with Rachel Beaujean, Dr Priya Srinivasan and Ted Brandsen, she developed a revised storyline for the ballet classic, which distances itself from the orientalist viewpoint of the original version. She also initiated Eye on Dance, in which professionals from the Dutch dance sector enter into dialogue about the challenges faced by makers with roots in the diaspora. 15/09 Comunicato Stampa Foto: Filibert Kraxner, Andrej Uspenski, Isaac Aoki, Jan Willem Kaldenbach Info: www.operaballet.nl bellaunavitaalloperablogpost.com