DUTCH NATIONAL BALLET
NIGHT FALL
In collaboration with &samhoud media and Samsung, Dutch National Ballet is the first company in the world to launch a ballet especially created for Virtual Reality: Night Fall. The Virtual Reality ballet will be presented in The VR Cinema in Amsterdam
There was free admission to the performance during the whole UITmarkt weekend in the Dutch National Opera & Ballet Virtual Reality Theatre on Museumplein, in Amsterdam.
In Night Fall, the viewer feels like part of the corps de ballet, entering a world where the boundary between dream and reality seems to vanish. The choreography is inspired by the world-famous ‘white acts’ from Romantic ballets like Swan Lake, La Bayadère and Les Sylphides. The ballet was choreographed by Peter Leung, a former dancer with Dutch National Ballet, to music composed by Robin Rimbaud (Scanner). It was directed by Jip Samhoud and Marijn Korver from &samhoud media. Night Fall is a co-production by Dutch National Ballet, &samhoud media and Chester Music. The Samsung Galaxy S7 and Gear VR provide the technology that makes it possible to produce the first ballet in Virtual Reality.
Choreographer Peter Leung: ‘It was quite a challenge to coordinate all the different aspects and to see if it would work, as a Virtual Reality ballet has never been created before. The filming was a totally new experience for me as well. We had to hide away and not get in the camera’s sightline, as it films everything in 360 degrees. That meant that I couldn’t see how a take had gone. The result, however, is poetic and magical’.
Director Jip Samhoud is proud of the collaboration. ‘It’s very special to combine this new technology with such a classical art form. The result is magical, as the viewer is literally in among the dancers, in the middle of
The world premiere of the very first Virtual Reality ballet took place last weekend in Amsterdam at the UITmarkt, the opening of the cultural season.