'Millimetre accuracy'

Local fans' long wait for a truly world-class dance company ends tomorrow with the arrival of the Nederland Dans Theater. And this isn't an Asian tour - it's just the two shows for Bangkok.

I long ago picked the NDT as the absolute must-see at this year's Bangkok Festival of Music and Dance after seeing them twice in Singapore.

"The ultimate dance machine," Britain's Independent newspaper has called them, "as sleek and powerful as a Lamborghini." The New York Times was even bolder: "If you see one live performance this year, this is the one to see."

Artistic director Jim Vincent told me by phone from The Hague how the company has formed two separate groups - NDT1, with 29 dancers, four choreographers and many guests, and NDT2, with 16 young dancers. Gone is NDT3, whose members were all veterans over 40.

"If we want to create a new catalyst for the future, I'd like to break through as many barriers as possible," Vincent said. "I don't want to limit it to just experienced dancers and alternative projects. We could do something to have a deeper influence on the art form itself."

His plans call for "more equal" interaction with other fields, like technology, medicine, fashion and architecture.

"I'm trying to draw new people to us and to dance by including what they're already comfortable with through their specialities."

Usually, Vincent said, dance dominates any collaboration with other media, but he wants the other fields to have more influence.

"We call this a concept group," he says. "We choose a particular theme or concept and then ask for proposals from the other fields.

"Not to sound too optimistic, but I think it gives us lots of room for evolution."

Meanwhile the NDT's former artistic director, Jiri Kylian, the famed choreographer who helped give the company its prominent place in the dance world, is leaving, and the Kylian Fund for Innovative Collaboration has been established in his honour.

"Jiri said, 'There's no more appropriate gift than allowing the opportunity for this company to grow in new directions with creative opportunities'," Vincent recalled.

Of the two works the NDT1 is bringing to Bangkok, Vincent said it's "a fantastic programme, although it's somewhat singularly focused.

"'Bella Figura' and 'Whereabouts Unknown' - two completely different musical and environmental experiences from Jiri - are well balanced, though. I think one can appreciate better what is sweet if one has a chance to also go to the extreme opposite and experience the salt.

"People consider not only his individual work as genius but also his ability to be versatile in his vocabulary, conceptual and environmental construct. He's got a very broad palate to work with and I think this programme shows a very good cross-section of his work, as well as our dancers' versatility."

"The dancers' technique at all levels," critic Bruce Marriott has written in Ballet.co magazine, "is just as exacting as anything you will see in a worldclass ballet company at principal/seniorsoloist levels.

"They can deliver a toe to millimetre accuracy after traversing 30 feet and spinning a couple of dozen times. I was particularly transfixed when one of the dancers assumed a seated position in midair, her partner holding her waist and spinning her around and around and yet the position was absolutely held as if she were steel - certainly not made of flesh and blood."

Of "Whereabouts Unknown", the Guardian's review of a July London show praised the "resonant" choreography, "evoking mythic figures - hunter soul-seeker, wind walker - and generating surges of energy, or ripples of calm".

And the Telegraph called it "a tribute to the bygone civilisations of the world, set to a tapestry of 20thcentury compositions and presented as a dialogue between the past and present.

"The tribally statuesque opening was a lovely reminder of the burnished elegance that the Czech choreographer is capable of, and Charles Ives' shimmering 'Unanswered Question for Orchestra' helped usher it to an aptly bittersweet close."

It's a three-day weekend and, of course, out-of-town trips are tempting, but with the NDT here on Friday and Saturday and Zubin Mehta conducting the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra on Sunday, are you sure you want to be away?

Two shows only

See the Nederland Dans Theater's "Bella Figura" and "Whereabouts Unknown" tomorrow at 7.30pm and Saturday at 2.30 at the Thailand Cultural Centre.

Seats cost Bt600 to Bt3,000 at www.ThaiTicketMajor.com and the door.

Learn more at www.NDT.nl and www.BangkokFestivals.com.