On the eve of Netherlands Dance Theatre's visit to Sydney, MALCOLM ROCK visited the company's new artistic director at his office in Holland.
Paul Lightfoot cannot sit still. He stalks his jumbled office above Netherlands Dance Theatre studios: one moment sidling alongside his desk, the next luxuriating upon an effete L-shaped sofa, then balancing from the window to exhale clouds of cigarette smoke out across the grey cityscape. Situated in central Den Haag (The Hague), the office and dance studios are within earshot of the royal palace where the Dutch sovereign, Queen Beatrix, has just announced her abdication and the end of a 33-year reign. The political-come-theatrical spectacle that is the monarchy in flux makes a fitting parallel for NDT and the greater business of modern dance that Lightfoot has come to reluctantly inherit.
English-born Lightfoot is boyish and endearing. At 47 he retains the excitable energy and wicked charm of an upper-school prankster, qualities that cheerfully belie the weight of his responsibilities and the high-pressure year he has endured. Since September, 2011, when he was heaped with the authority of artistic director in politically contentious circumstances (his predecessor, Jim Vincent, was stripped of his title less than three years into the job), Lightfoot has been charged with reasserting the value of one of the worldís most celebrated modern dance ensembles.
Ahead of the companyís first appearance in Sydney for almost two decades, his task has been to reconcile what he terms the NDT dual personality disorder...
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