sad news today:, celebrated choreographer rudi van dantzig has passed away, he had been ill for quite some time…
my condoleances to family, friends and the company
i met rudi only briefly 5 years ago, when we worked on a poster together and he was a soft spoken and very charming man, very sad…
we have just completed a new poster for an exhibition of 50 years ‘dutch national ballet posters’ which opens on the 29th of january (till late apri) at the dutch poster museum in the small town of ‘hoorn’
a series of roughly 50 of our posters are featured in the show and were also used to create the paper tutu shown above…
me studio will also be taking part in the portfolio reviews at this years student career day in amsterdam: vroaam 12, remember the date (16th of february)
in preparation for the exhibition ’50 years of the dutch national ballet’ at the dutch poster museum (late january till april), the national ballet have asked me to help curate and choose the selection of posters to be shown…
amongst the graphic designers who have at some point designed posters for them during that 50 year period (otto treumann, jurrian schroffer, dick elfers, gielijn escher) there was also a notable example by none other than ‘anton beeke’, the poster was very difficult to find and wasn’t even available in their own extensive archive, after calling a few reliable contacts i eventually managed to trace the original picture (shot by ‘boudewijn neuteboom’) shown above
fortunately last friday i finally found the original poster for ‘bacchanten’ (printed in black on brown parcel paper, with bronze silkscreen typography) from 1986, in the collection of the dutch theater institute ‘TIN’, both the poster and the actual performance were quite controversial at the time, although not one of my most favourite designs by ‘beeke’ it is very interesting for me as a ballet poster designer to see what preceded my own work…
a journalist told me that beeke had apparently once told him that one of the four models in the bacchanalian scene is photographer ‘rineke dijkstra’ who was, at the time, his assistant… we also managed to trace several other interesting archive pieces which will be shown when the exhibition opens later this month, more news soon…
a new year and time for a new intern:
say hello to ‘joris van meegen’ (3rd year student @ KABK academy, the hague) who started today at the studio, hope you enjoy it… by the way the choice of background for this picture was his, not mine :)