Watching NDT 2's I Dreamt, It Was with my 8-year-old daughter

Review by Dhruv Janssen-Sanghavi

Long before I became a lawyer, I was an aspiring dancer and choreographer. It had been twenty-two years since I last engaged with dance as an occupation, and fourteen years since I had even stepped into a theatre to watch a dance performance.

NDT 2's The Edge of Things proved the perfect point of re-entry. Experimental choreography performed by some of the finest young dancers I have ever seen, it was a thrilling reminder of why I had once fallen in love with the art form. The three works that comprised the programme seemed impossible to surpass, each somehow outdoing the one before it.

My daughter Gaia, then seven years old, was equally captivated. She left the theatre asking when we could attend another dance performance. So when NDT 2 returned with I Dreamt, It Was, we could hardly stay away.

The programme consisted of two works: Kill Your Darlings, choreographed by siblings Imre van Opstal and Marne van Opstal, and SAABA by Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar.

As we took our seats in the beautiful, but uncomfortably warm, International Theatre Amsterdam, both Gaia and I were giddy with anticipation. Our expectations were admittedly lofty after The Edge of Things. Could this programme possibly live up to them?

The Van Opstal siblings answered that question almost immediately.

Kill Your Darlings did not merely meet our expectations; it exceeded them.

The costumes were ordinary clothes one might expect to see on young people walking the streets of Amsterdam on a hot summer day. The setting, however, felt distinctly post-apocalyptic. The dancers spoke throughout the performance, their voices electronically distorted into the robotic tones that Hollywood films of the 1990s taught us to associate with artificial intelligence. The irony was difficult to miss: the AI voices of our imagination now sound far less human than the AI voices we use every day.

The choreography demanded everything from the dancers. Yet the performance engaged the audience on more than a purely visual level. It was intellectually stimulating without ever becoming heavy-handed. Its provocations arrived on a slow drip, inviting reflection on themes such as humanity's growing dependence on technology while avoiding the didacticism that often accompanies such subjects.

Most strikingly, the work resisted easy answers. It is remarkably easy to become polarised about artificial intelligence. Yet rather than confirming my anxieties, the performance forced me to interrogate them.

"Welcome to reality," the dancers announced in their distorted voices. The phrase landed with surprising force. Having lived through the age of cassettes, CDs, MP3 players and streaming platforms, I found myself wondering whether a line ought to be drawn somewhere before technology begins to erode our humanity. But where exactly should that line be drawn? My thoughts drifted to communities that reject much of modern technology altogether. Is humanity threatened by technology, or is humanity itself the product of technological innovation? 

Towards the end of the performance, the dancers gathered in a circle around two beams of light. The image was wonderfully ambiguous. It might have been salvation. Or perhaps their software was being updated by those who controlled technology.

The combination of extraordinary movement, compelling music and genuine intellectual engagement kept us on the edge of our seats throughout. 

When the curtain fell for the interval, the audience erupted into applause and a thoroughly deserved standing ovation. Any doubts I had about whether The Edge of Things could be surpassed had evaporated.

Then came SAABA.

The programme notes described the work as follows:

"SAABA is full of passion, vulnerability and hypnotic movements, with spherical lighting design and an irresistible groove by Ori Lichtik. It is a powerful example of Eyal's unique style, fusing classical ballet and contemporary dance."

I reproduce that description because it so thoroughly failed to match my own experience.

The movement was undeniably hypnotic, but not in a way that sustained my attention. Instead, the relentless repetition gradually flattened the experience. Where Kill Your Darlings continually developed and surprised, SAABA seemed content to circle the same ideas for its entire duration.

This is not to say that the choreography lacked technical demands. Quite the opposite. The dancers performed with remarkable commitment and precision. Clad in nude-coloured leotards, they exposed every muscular effort required to sustain the choreography. By the end of the thirty-six-minute work they were visibly drenched in sweat.

Yet technical accomplishment alone could not compensate for the absence of dramatic development. Throughout the performance I found myself waiting for a shift in mood, energy or intention that never arrived. The anticipation itself became the dominant experience.

Perhaps that was the point. Perhaps the work was intended as a meditation on endurance, repetition or ritual. If so, it left me unconvinced.

What made the contrast with Kill Your Darlings particularly stark was that both works relied on repetition in parts. Yet only one transformed that repetition into something meaningful. The Van Opstals used recurring motifs to generate questions and create tension. In SAABA, the repetition often felt like an end in itself.

The dancers deserved every bit of admiration they received, the choreography, less so.

Gaia supplied the most concise review of the evening.

"I loved the first part because the music was different in different parts, and the dancers did many different things very well. The second part was not so nice because it was slow, and everybody did the same thing all the time. Nothing happened."

"Why did you insist that I clap afterwards then?" I asked.

"Not clapping would be unkind," she counselled me, "the dancers worked very hard."

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Review: I Dreamt, It Was Produced by: Nederlands Dans Theatre  Choreographed and Created by: Imre Van Opstal, Marne Van Opstal, Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar Venue: International Theatre Amsterdam Date: May 27th - May 30th 2026