© Hans Gerritsen
Bonnie Doets, Jan Kooijman en Sherida Lie
Ed Wubbe about TWOOLS
Ed Wubbe: “TWOOLS has become an institution. It’s fresh, vibrant and an experiment in form. Apart from a time restriction, there are no other constraints on the choreographers. You might think that a unifying theme would work better, but that’s not the case. The autonomy of each piece is part of the success. The context of the pieces is crucial, and we are very careful about that. The sequence creates structure and rhythm in the evening. This means that the order is often only decided a couple of hours before the première.
The entire process is exciting and keeps us all on our toes.
One of main aspects of TWOOLS is to develop talent. Over the last few years, we invited over 40 young choreographers working in the Netherlands to create a piece for TWOOLS; many were young freelancers at the start of their career. Now we also invite foreign choreographers for TWOOLS. I am artistic leader of the Internationaler Wettbewerb für Choreographen in Hannover, where we launched the Scapino production prize. The winner then creates a piece for the next edition of TWOOLS. Christophe Garcia and Loïc Perela were particularly successful. For this season, Garcia was asked to come back, this time to make a longer piece. We have just done the first ‘TWOOLS International’ with young choreographers working with major international companies and want to work with international festival programmers in the future. Ultimately, we want to extend our choice outside Europe. I will shortly be visiting Brazil to scout new talent. But we’ll continue to keep a close eye on Dutch talent, and talent in our own company. This year, we invited Lucas Jervies; TWOOLS will always encourage young talent.
TWOOLS is Scapino's dancefestival
Short dance pieces, conceived and presented at top speed, inter-cut with rapid scene changes and held together by Ed Wubbe’s direction
With four scintillating evenings of dance, TWOOLS, the Scapino annual dance festival, offers audiences a bewitching cocktail of new talent and new choreographies. TWOOLS presents a non-stop sequence of short, dazzling dance pieces, with rapid changes of décor. TWOOLS is a must for lovers of dynamic modern dance, and has been a runaway success for 10 years.
Seven choreographers are taking part in the 11th edition of TWOOLS: Marina Mascarell Martinez, ex-dancer of the NDT, New York-based choreographer and winner of the Scapino production prize; Frenchman Jérôme Delbey, of the Gothenburg Ballet; choreographer Thom Stuart is creating a piece for 6 Scapino dancers and 24 students of Codarts, the Rotterdam Dance Academy; Scapino’s own Lucas Jervies and Loïc Perela have been invited to create new work following on from their previous TWOOLS creations. Company choreographers Ed Wubbe and Georg Reischl complete the group of seven.
The first edition of this dance spectacle, devised and directed by artistic director Ed Wubbe, was presented in 1999. Thanks to the appealing concept – full of contrasts, exciting, serious, humorous, and always surprising – the TWOOLS series soon managed to secure a place for itself on the dance calendar.