The Dutch choreographer Hans van Manen, who has died aged 93, was a pioneering and prolific figure in European dance, and created more than 150 ballets across seven decades.
As a child, Van Manen would dance to the radio in his living room but he came late to formal training, which left him unconfined by tradition and free to pull ballet into the modern era as a founder member and choreographer of Nederlands Dans Theater. “Pure classical and pure modern dance will shortly no longer exist,” he told the Guardian in 1969. “There’s little hope for either style. But there is a third way ... and this is where the future of ballet lies – the marriage of classical and modern dance.”
